The essence of Christianity

wartolg I

No. VI.

THE

ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

BY

LUDWIG FEUEEBACH.

ton % fSwrnto German (Bbitww,

BY

MARIAN EYANS,

TEANSLATOB OB 1 "STBAUSS'8 LIFE OF JESUS."

LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN,

8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND.
MDCCCLIV.

LONDON :

SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
CO VENT GARDEN.

PREFACE

THE SECOND EDITION.*

THE clamour excited by the present work has not surprised
me, and hence it has not in the least moved me from my
position. On the contrary, I have once more, in all calmness,
subjected my work to the severest scrutiny, both historical and
philosophical; I have, as far as possible, freed it from its
defects of form, and enriched it with new developments, illustra
tions and historical testimonies, testimonies in the highest
degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have thus verified
my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be hoped that readers
whose eyes are not sealed will be convinced and will admit, even
though reluctantly, that my work contains a faithful, correct
translation of the Christian religion out of the oriental language
.of imagery into plain speech. And it has no pretension to be
anything more than a close translation, or, to speak literally,
an empirical or historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of
the enigma of the Christian religion. The general propositions
which 1 premise in the Introduction are no a priori, excogi
tated propositions, no products of speculation ; they have
arisen out of the analysis of religion; they are only, as in
deed are all the fundamental ideas of the work, generalizations

* The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too
specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English
reader.

VI PREFACE.

from the known manifestations of human nature, and in par
ticular of the religious consciousness, facts converted into
thoughts, i. e., expressed in general terms, and thus made the
property of the understanding. The ideas of my work are only
conclusions, consequences, drawn from premises which are not
themselves mere ideas, hut objective facts either actual or
historical facts which had not their place in my head simply
in virtue of their ponderous existence in folio . I unconditionally
repudiate absolute, immaterial, self-sufficing speculation, that
speculation which draws its material from within. I differ toto
ccelo from those philosophers who pluck out their eyes that
they may see better; for my thought I require the senses,
especially sight ; I found my ideas on materials which can be
appropriated only through the activity of the senses. I do not
generate the object from the thought, but the thought from the
object; and I hold that alone to be an object which has an exist
ence beyond one's own brain. I am an idealist only in the region
of practical philosophy, that is, I do not regard the limits of
the past and present as the limits of humanity, of the future ;
on the contrary, I firmly believe that many things yes, many
things which with the short-sighted, pusillanimous practical
men of to-day, pass for flights of imagination, for ideas never
to be realized, for mere chimeras, will to-morrow, i.e., in the
next century, centuries in individual life are days in the life
of humanity, exist in full reality. Briefly, the "Idea" is
to me only faith in the historical future, in the triumph of
truth and virtue ; it has for me only a political and moral sig
nificance ; for in the sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy,
I attach myself, in direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy,
only to realism, to materialism in the sense above indicated.
The maxim hitherto adopted by speculative philosophy: all
that is mine I carry with me, the old omnia mea mecum porto,
I cannot, alas ! appropriate. I have many things outside my
self, which I cannot convey either in my pocket or my head,
but which nevertheless I look upon as belonging to me, not
indeed as a mere man a view not now in question but as a
philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the

PREFACE. vii

domain of mind; and the natural philosopher can do nothing
without instruments, without material means. In this character
I have written the present work, which consequently contains
nothing else than the principle of a new philosophy verified
practically, i. e., in concreto, in application to a special object, but
an object which has a universal significance: namely, to religion,
in which this principle is exhibited, developed and thoroughly
carried out. This philosophy is essentially distinguished from
the systems hitherto prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real,
complete nature of man; but for that very reason it is antagonistic
to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i. e., anti-
human, anti-natural religion and speculation. It does not, as I
have already said elsewhere, regard the pen as the only fit organ
for the revelation of truth, but the eye and ear, the hand and foot ;
it does not identify the idea of the fact with the fact itself, so as
to reduce real existence to an existence on paper, but it separates
the two, and precisely by this separation attains to the fact itself;
it recognises as the true thing, not the thing as it is an object
of the abstract reason, but as it is an object of the real, complete
man, and hence as it is itself a real, complete thing. This
philosophy does not rest on an Understanding per se, on an
absolute, nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to
whom, but on the understanding of man ; though not, I grant,
on that of man enervated by speculation and dogma ; and it
speaks the language of men, not an empty, unknown tongue.
Yes, both in substance and in speech, it places philosophy in
the negation of philosophy, i. e., it declares that alone to be the
true philosophy which is converted in succwn et sanguinem,
which is incarnate in Man ; and hence it finds its highest
triumph in the fact that to all dull and pedantic minds, which
place the essence of philosophy in the show of philosophy, it
appears to be no philosophy at all.

This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance of
Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute
Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in short,
no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a real being, the
true Ens rcalissimum man ; its principle, therefore, is in the

Vlll PREFACE.

highest degree positive and real. It generates thought from
the opposite of thought, from Matter, from existence, from the
senses ; it has relation to its ohject first through the senses, i. e.,
passively, hefore defining it in thought. Hence my work, as a
specimen of this philosophy, so far from being a production to
be placed in the category of Speculation, although in another
point of view it is the true, the incarnate result of prior philo
sophical systems, is the direct opposite of speculation, nay,
puts an end to it by explaining it. Speculation makes religion
say only what it has itself thought, and expressed far better
than religion; it assigns a meaning to religion without any refer
ence to the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond
itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; I constitute
myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter. Not to
invent, but to discover, "to unveil existence," has been my sole
object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but re
ligion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology,
denies this ; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion it
self that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion
that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis,
since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God,
not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feel
ings and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration.
I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion,
only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions
and delusions called theology ; but in doing so I have certainly
committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative,
irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism at
least in the sense of this work is the secret of religion itself;
that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally,
not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its
heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and
divinity of human nature. Or let it be proved that the his
torical as well as the rational arguments of my work are false;
let them be refuted not, however, I entreat, by judicial
denunciations, or theological jeremiads, by the trite phrases
of speculation, or other pitiful expedients for which I have no

PEEFACK ix

name, but by reasons, and such reasons as I have not already
thoroughly answered.

Certainly, my work is negative, destructive; but, be it observed,
only in relation to the inhuman, not to the human elements
of religion. It is therefore divided into two parts, of which
the first is, as to its main idea, positive, the second, including
the appendix, not wholly but in the main, negative; in both,
however, the same positions are proved, only in a different or
rather opposite manner. The first exhibits religion in its essence,
its truth, the second exhibits it in its contradictions; the first
is development, the second polemic ; thus the one is, according
to the nature of the case, calmer, the other more vehement.
Development advances gently, contest impetuously; for de
velopment is self- contented at every stage, contest only at the
last blow. Development is deliberate, but contest resolute.
Development is light, contest fire. Hence results a difference
between the two parts even as to their form. Thus in the first
part I show that the true sense of Theology is Anthropology,
that there is no distinction between the predicates of the divine
and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between
the divine and human subject: I say consequently, for wherever,
as is especially the case in theology, the predicates are not acci
dents, but express the essence of the subject, there is no distinc
tion between subject and predicate, the one can be put in the
place of the other ; on which point I refer the reader to the
Analytics of Aristotle, or even merely to the Introduction of
Porphyry. In the second part, on the other hand, I show that
the distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be made,
between the theological and anthropological predicates, resolves
itself into an absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the
first part I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real son,
the son of God in the same sense in which man is the son of
man, and I find therein the truth, the essence of religion, that
it conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as a divine
relation ; on the other hand, in the second part I show that the
Son of God not indeed in religion, but in theology, which is
the reflection of religion upon itself, is not a son in the natural,

A3

X PREFACE.

human sense, but in an entirely different manner, contradictory
to Nature and reason, and therefore absurd, and I find in this
negation of human sense and the human understanding, the
negation of religion. Accordingly the first part is the direct,
the second the indirect proof, that theology is anthropology :
hence the second part necessarily has reference to the first ; it
has no independent significance ; its only aim is to show, that
the sense in which religion is interpreted in the previous part
of the work must be the true one, because the contrary is ab
surd. In brief, in the first part I am chiefly concerned with
religion, in the second with theology : I say chiefly, for it was
impossible to exclude theology from the first part, or religion
from the second. A mere glance will show that my investigation
includes speculative theology or philosophy, and not, as has been
here and there erroneously supposed, common theology only, a
kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear as possible,
(though, for the rest, I am sufficiently well acquainted with it,)
confining myself always to the most essential, strict and neces
sary definition of the object,* and hence to that definition which
gives to an object the most general interest, and raises it above
the sphere of theology. But it is with theology that I have to
do, not with theologians ; for I can only undertake to charac
terize what is primary, the original, not the copy, principles,
not persons, species, not individuals, objects of history, not
objects of the chronique scandaleuse.

If my work contained only the second part, it would be per
fectly just to accuse it of a negative tendency, to represent the
proposition : Eeligion is nothing, is an absurdity, as its essen
tial purport. But I by no means say (that were an easy task !) :
God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is
nothing, &c. ; I only show that they are not that which the
illusions of theology make them, not foreign, but native mys
teries, the mysteries of human nature ; I show that religion
takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature and humanity, for

* For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two ;
for, in the strictest sense (see Luther, t. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.

PEEFACE. XI

the essential, and hence conceives their true essence as a sepa
rate, special existence : that consequently, religion, in the
definitions which it gives of God, e. g., of the Word of God,
at least in those definitions which are not negative in the sense
ahove alluded to, only defines or makes objective the true
nature of the human word. The reproach that according to my
book, religion is an absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion, would
be well-founded only if, according to it, that into which I re
solve religion, which I prove to be its true object and substance,
namely man, anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a
pure illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a sub
ordinate significance to anthropology, a significance which is
assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above it
and in opposition to it, I, on the contrary, while reducing
theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology,
very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made
man into God ; though, it is true, this human God was by a
further process made a transcendental, imaginary God, remote
from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take the word
anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any other philo
sophy, but in an infinitely higher and more general sense.

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in
dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but
on earth, in the realm of reality ; we only see real things in the
entrancing splendour of imagination and caprice, instead of in
the simple daylight of reality and necessity. Hence I do
nothing more to religion and to speculative philosophy and
theology also than to open its eyes, or rather to turn its gaze
from the internal towards the external, i.e., I change the object
as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality.

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to
the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality,
the appearance to the essence, this change, inasmuch as it does
away with illusion, is an absolute annihilation, or at least a
reckless profanation ; for in these days illusion only is sacred,
truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in pro
portion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the

xii

highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of
sacredness. Religion has disappeared, and for it has been sub
stituted, even among Protestants, the appearance of religion
the Church in order at least that " the faith" may be imparted
to the ignorant and indiscriminating multitude; that faith
being still the Christian, because the Christian churches stand
now as they did a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly,
the external signs of the faith are in vogue. That which has
no longer any existence in faith (the faith of the modern world
is only an ostensible faith, a faith which does not believe what
it fancies that it believes, and is only an undecided, pusillani
mous unbelief ) is still to pass current as opinion : that which
is no longer sacred in itself and in truth, is still at least to seem
sacred. Hence the simulated religious indignation of the pre
sent age, the age of shows and illusion, concerning my analysis,
especially of the Sacraments. But let it not be demanded of
an author who proposes to himself as his goal not the favour
of his contemporaries, but only the truth, the unveiled, naked
truth, that he should have or feign respect towards an empty
appearance, especially as the object which underlies this appear
ance is in itself the culminating point of religion, i. e., the point
at which the religious slides into the irreligious. Thus much in
justification, not in excuse, of my analysis of the Sacraments.
With regard to the true bearing of my analysis of the sacra
ments, especially as presented in the concluding chapter, I only
remark, that I therein illustrate by a palpable and visible ex
ample the essential purport, the peculiar theme of my work, that
I therein call upon the senses themselves to witness to the truth
of my analysis and my ideas, and demonstrate ad oculos, ad tac-
tum, ad gustum, what I have taught ad captum throughout the
previous pages. As, namely, the water of Baptism, the wine and
bread of the Lord's Supper, taken in their natural power and
significance, are and effect infinitely more than in a superna-
turalistic, illusory significance; so the object of religion in
general, conceived in the sense of this work, i. e., the anthropo
logical sense, is infinitely more productive and real, both in
theory and practice, than when accepted in the sense of theo-

PREFACE. Xlll

logy. For as that which is or is supposed to be imparted in the
water, hread, and wine, over and above these natural substances
themselves, is something in the imagination only, but in truth,
in reality, nothing; so also the object of religion in general,
the Divine essence, in distinction from the essence of Nature
and Humanity, that is to say, if its attributes, as understand
ing, love, &c., are and signify something else than these attri
butes as they belong to man and Nature, is only something in
the imagination, but in truth and reality nothing. Therefore
this is the moral of the fable we should not, as is the case
in theology and speculative philosophy, make real beings and
things into arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols, or predicates of
a distinct, transcendant, absolute, i. e., abstract being ; but we
should accept and understand them in the significance which
they have in themselves, which is identical with their qualities,
with those conditions which make them what they are : thus
only do we obtain the key to a real theory and practice. I, in
fact, put in the place of the barren baptismal water, the bene
ficent effect of real water. How "watery," how trivial! Yes,
indeed, very trivial. But so Marriage, in its time, was a very
trivial truth, which Luther, on the ground of his natural good
sense, maintained in opposition to the seemingly holy illusion
of celibacy. But while I thus view water as a real thing, I at
the same time intend it as a vehicle, an image, an example, a
symbol, of the "unholy" spirit of my work, just as the water
of Baptism the object of my analysis is at once literal
and symbolical water. It is the same with bread and wine.
Malignity has hence drawn the conclusion that bathing, eating
and drinking are the summa summarum, the positive result of
my work. I make no other reply than this : if the whole of
religion is contained in the Sacraments, and there are conse
quently no other religious acts than those which are performed
in Baptism and the Lord's Supper; then I grant that the entire
purport and positive result of my work are bathing, eating and
drinking, since this work is nothing but a faithful, rigid histo-
rico-philosophical analysis of religion the revelation of reli
gion to itself, the awakening of religion to self -consciousness.

XIV PREFACE.

I say an historico -philosophical analysis, in distinction from
a merely historical analysis of Christianity. The historical
critic such a one, for example, as Daumer or Ghillany shows
that the Lord's Supper is a rite lineally descended from the
ancient Cultus of human sacrifice ; that once, instead of bread
and wine, real human flesh and blood were partaken. I, on
the contrary, take as the object of my analysis and reduction
only the Christian significance of the rite, that view of it which
is sanctioned in Christianity, and I proceed on the supposition
that only that significance w r hich a dogma or institution has in
Christianity (of course in ancient Christianity, not in modern),
whether it may present itself in other religions or not, is also
the true origin of that dogma or institution in so far as it is
Christian. Again, the historical critic, as, for example, Lutz-
elberger, shows that the narratives of the miracles of Christ
resolve themselves into contradictions and absurdities, that
they are later fabrications, and that consequently Christ was no
miracle- worker nor, in general, that which he is represented to
be in the Bible. I, on the other hand, do not inquire what the
real, natural Christ was or may have been in distinction from
what he has been made or has become in Supernaturalism ; on
the contrary, I accept the Christ of religion, but I show that
this superhuman being is nothing else than a product and reflex
of the supernatural human mind. I do not ask whether this
or that, or any miracle can happen or not ; I only show what
miracle is, and I show it not a priori, but by examples of
miracles, narrated in the Bible as real events ; in doing so,
however, I answer or rather preclude the question as to the
possibility or reality or necessity of miracle. Thus much con
cerning the distinction between me and the historical critics
who have attacked Christianity. As regards my relation to
Strauss and Bruno Bauer, in company with whom I am con
stantly named, I merely point out here that the distinction
between our works is sufficiently indicated by the distinction
between their objects, which is implied even in the title-page.
Bauer takes for the object of his criticism the evangelical his
tory, i.e., biblical Christianity, or rather biblical theology;

PKEFACE. XV

Strauss, the System of Christian Doctrine and the Life of Jesus,
(which may also be included under the title of Christian Doc
trine,) i.e., dogmatic Christianity or rather dogmatic theology;
I, Christianity in general, i. e., the Christian religion, and
consequently, only Christian philosophy or theology. Hence I
take my citations chiefly from men in whom Christianity was
not merely a theory or a dogma, not merely theology, but re
ligion. My principal theme is Christianity, is Religion, as it is
the immediate object, the immediate nature, of man. Erudi
tion and philosophy are to me only the means by which I bring
to light the treasure hid in man.

I must further mention that the circulation which my work
has had amongst the public at large, was neither desired nor
expected by me. It is true that I have always taken as the
standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract,
particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I
have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or
that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the
highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains,
both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philo
sophy, i. e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally,
that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling
one. Hence, in all my works as well as in the present one, I
have made the utmost clearness, simplicity and definiteness, a
law to myself, so that they may be understood, at least in the
main, by every cultivated and thinking man. But notwith
standing this, my work can be appreciated and fully understood
only by the scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who loves
truth, who is capable of forming a judgment, who is above the
notions and prejudices of the learned and unlearned vulgar ; for
although a thoroughly independent production, it has yet its
necessary logical basis in history. I very frequently refer to
this or that historical phenomenon without expressly designating
it, thinking this superfluous ; and such references can be under
stood by the scholar alone. Thus, for example, in the very
first chapter, where I develope the necessary consequences of
the stand -point of Feeling,! allude to Jacobi and Schleiermacher ;

XVI PREFACE.

in the second chapter I allude chiefly to Kantism, Scepticism,
Theism, Materialism and Pantheism; in the chapter on the
" Stand-point of Beligion," where I discuss the contradictions
between the religious or theological and the physical or natural-
philosophical view of Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age
of orthodoxy, and especially to the philosophy of Descartes
and Leibnitz, in which this contradiction presents itself in a
peculiarly characteristic manner. The reader, therefore, who is
unacquainted with the historical facts and ideas presupposed in
my work, will fail to perceive on what my arguments and ideas
hinge ; no wonder if my positions often appear to him baseless,
however firm the footing on which they stand. It is true that
the subject of my work is of universal human interest; more
over, its fundamental ideas, though not in the form in which
they are here expressed, or in which they could be expressed
under existing circumstances, will one day become the common
property of mankind : for nothing is opposed to them in the pre
sent day but empty, powerless illusions and prejudices in contra
diction with the true nature of man. But in considering this
subject in the first instance, I was under the necessity of treating
it as a matter of science, of philosophy ; and in rectifying the aber
rations of Beligion, Theology, and Speculation, I was naturally
obliged to use their expressions, and even to appear to speculate,
or which is the same thing to turn theologian myself, while I
nevertheless only analyse speculation, i. e., reduce theology to
anthropology. My work, as I said before, contains, and ap
plies in the concrete, the principle of a new philosophy suited
not to the schools, but to man. Yes, it contains that principle,
but only by evolving it out of the very core of religion ; hence,
be it said in passing, the new philosophy can no longer, like
the old Catholic and modern Protestant scholasticism, fall into
the temptation to prove its agreement with religion by its
agreement with Christian dogmas ; on the contrary, being
evolved from the nature of religion, it has in itself the true
essence of religion, is, in its very quality as a philosophy, a
religion also. But a work which considers ideas in their genesis
and explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence, is, by

PEEFACE. XVli

the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, unsuited to
popular reading.

Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to many
apparently unvindicated positions, I refer to my articles in the
Deutsches Jahrluch, January and February, 1842, to my cri
tiques and Charakteristiken des modernen After-christenthums,
in previous numbers of the same periodical, and to my earlier
works, especially the following : P. Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Philosophic und Menschheit, Ausbach, 1838,
and Philosophic und Christenthum, Mannheim, 1839. In
these works I have sketched, with a few sharp touches, the
historical solution of Christianity, and have shown that Chris
tianity has in fact long vanished, not only from the Keason but
from the Life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed
idea, in flagrant contradiction with our Fire and Life Assurance
companies, our rail-roads and steam-carriages, our picture and
sculpture galleries, our military and industrial schools, our
theatres and scientific museums.

LUDWIG FEUEEBACH.
Bruckberg, Feb. 14, 1843.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTEB PAGB

I. 1, The Essential Nature of Man 1

I. 2. The Essence of Eeligion considered generally .... 12

PAET I.
THE TEUE OE ANTHEOPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF EELIGION.

II. God as a Being of the Understanding 32

III. God as a^Moral Being, or Law 43

IV. The Mystery of the Incarnation; or, God as Love, as a Being

of the Heart . , .. 49

V. The Mystery of the Suffering God 58

VI. TheMystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God. ... 64

VII. The Mystery of the Logos and Divine Image 73

VIII. The Mystery of the Cosmogonical Principle in God .... 79

IX. The Mystery of Mysticism* or Nature in God 86

X. The Mystery of Providence and Creation out of Nothing . . 100

XI. The Significance of the Creation in Judaism Ill

XII. The Omnipotence of Feeling, or the Mystery of Prayer 1 . . 119

XIII. TheMystery of Faith the Mystery of Miracle 125

XIV. The Mystery of the Eesurrection and of the Miraculous Con
ception . 134

XV. The Mystery of the Christian Christ, or the Personal God . 139

XVI. The Distinction between Christianity and Heathenism . . 149

XVII. The Significance of Voluntary Celibacy and Monachism . . 159

XVIIL The Christian Heaven, or Personal Immortality .... 169

XX CONTENTS.

PART II.
THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION.

CHAPTEB PAGB

XIX. The Essential Stand-point of Religion 184

XX. The Contradiction in the Existence of God 196

XXI. The Contradiction in the Revelation of God 203

XXII. The Contradiction in the Nature of God in general .... 211

XXIII. The Contradiction in the Speculative Doctrine of God . . .224

XXIV. The Contradiction in the Trinity 230

XXV. The Contradiction in the Sacraments 234

XXVI. The Contradiction of Faith and Love 245

XXVII. Concluding Application 267

APPENDIX.

SECTION

1. The Religious Emotions purely Human 275

2. God is Feeling released from Limits 277

3. God is the highest Feeling of Self 278

4. Distinction between the Pantheistic and Personal God . . . 279

5. Nature without interest for Christians 282

6. In God Man is his own Object . .^ 284

7. Christianity the Religion of Suffering ; 287

8. Mystery of the Trinity . . . "7~~/ 288

9. Creation out of Nothing 293

10. Egoism of the Israelitish Religion 294

11. The Idea of Providence 295

12. Contradiction of Faith and Reason 300

13. The Resurrection of Christ 304

14. The Christian a Supermundane Being 304

15. The Celibate and Monachism . 305

16. The Christian Heaven 313

17. What Faith denies on Earth it affirms in Heaven . . . . . 315

18. Contradictions in the Sacraments ... 316

19. Contradiction of Faith and Love 319

20. Results of the Principle of Faith 325

2J. Contradiction of the God-Man 332

2. Anthropology the Mystery of Theology 337

THE

ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER I.

INTBODUCTION.

1 . The Essential Nature of Man.

EELIGION has its "basis in the essential difference hetween man
and the brute the hrutes have no religion. It is true that
the old uncritical writers on natural history attributed to the
elephant, among other laudable qualities, the virtue of religi
ousness ; but the religion of elephants belongs to the realm of
fable. Cuvier, one of the greatest authorities on the animal
kingdom, assigns, on the strength of his personal observa
tions, no higher grade of intelligence to the elephant than to
the dog.

But what is this essential difference between man and the
brute ? The most simple, general, and also the most popular
answer to this question is consciousness : but consciousness
in the strict sense ; for the consciousness implied in the feeling
of self as an individual, in discrimination by the senses, in
the perception and even judgment of outward things accord
ing to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied to the brutes.
Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being
to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of
thought. The brute is indeed conscious of himself as an
individual and he has accordingly the feeling of self as the
common centre of successive sensations but not as a species :
hence, he is without that consciousness which in its nature, as
in its name, is akin to science. Where there is this higher
consciousness there is a capability of science. Science is the
cognizance of species. In practical life we have to do with
individuals ; in science, with species. But only a being to

B

2 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

whom his own species, his own nature, is an object of thought,
can make the essential nature of other things or beings an
object of thought.

Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold life : in
the brute, the inner life is one with the outer ; man has both an
inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is the life which
has relation to his species, to his general, as distinguished from
his individual, nature. Man thinks that is, he converses with
himself. The brute can exercise no function which has rela
tion to its species without another individual external to
itself; but man can perform the functions of thought and
speech, which strictly imply such a relation, apart from another
individual. Man is himself at once I and thou ; he can put
himself in the place of another, for this reason, that to him his
species, his essential nature, and not merely his individuality,
is an object of thought.

Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of
man, is then identical with self-consciousness with the con
sciousness which man has of his nature. But religion, ex
pressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite ; thus it is
and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has
of his own not finite and limited, but infinite nature. A
really finite being has not even the faintest adumbration, still
less consciousness, of an infinite being, for the limit of the
nature is also the limit of the consciousness. The conscious
ness of the caterpillar, whose life is confined to a particular
species of plant, does not extend itself beyond this narrow
domain. It does, indeed, discriminate between this plant and
other plants, but more it knows not. A consciousness so
limited, but on account of that very limitation so infallible, we do
not call consciousness, but instinct. Consciousness, in the
strict or proper sense, is identical with consciousness of the
infinite; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; con
sciousness is essentially infinite in its nature.* The conscious
ness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of
the infinity of the consciousness ; or, in the consciousness of

* Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut
loquimtur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non ^ genus
rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob
varia obstacula multa sint, quse re ipsa non norit. Gassendi, (Opp. Omn.
Phys.)

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 3

the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity
of his own nature.

What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious,
or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity
of man ?* Reason, Will, Affection. To a complete man belong
the power of thought, the power of will, the power of affection.
The power of thought is the light of the intellect, the power of
will is energy of character, the power of affection is love.
Eeason, love, force of will, are perfections the perfections of
the human being nay, more, they are absolute perfections of
being. To will, to love, to think, are the highest powers, are
the absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of his ex
istence. Man exists to think, to love, to will. Now that
which is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis and
principle of a being. But what is the end of reason ? Reason.
Of love ? Love. Of will ? Freedom of the will. We think
for the sake of thinking; love for the sake of loving; will for
the sake of willing i.e., that we maybe free. True existence
is thinking, loving, willing existence. That alone is true, per
fect, divine, which exists for its own sake. But such is love,
such is reason, such is will. The divine trinity in man, above
the individual man, is the unity of reason, love, will. Reason,
Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is
nothing without them, he is what he is only by them ; they are
the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has
nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers
divine, absolute powers to which he can oppose no resistance. f

How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love,
the rational one reason ? Who has not experienced the over
whelming power of melody ? And what else is the -power of
melody but the power of feeling ? Music is the language of
feeling ; melody is audible feeling feeling communicating
itself. Who has not experienced the power of love, or at least
heard of it ? Which is the stronger love or the individual

* The obtuse materialist says : " Man is distinguished from the brute
only by consciousness he is an animal with consciousness superadded ;"
not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes
place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the
rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the
lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.

f " Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la
vie." Montaigne.

B 2

4 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

man ? Is it man that possesses love, or is it not much rather
love that possesses man ? When love impels a man to suffer
death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death- conquer
ing power his own individual power, or is it not rather the
power of love ? And who that e?er truly thought has not
experienced that quiet, subtle power the power of thought ?
When thou sinkest into deep reflection, forgetting thyself and
what is around thee, dost thou govern reason, or is it not
reason which governs and absorbs thee? Scientific enthu
siasm is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect over
thee ? The desire of knowledge is it not a simply irresistible,
and all-conquering power ? And when thou suppressest a
passion, renouncest a habit, in short, achievest a victory over
thyself, is this victorious power thy own personal power, or is
it not rather the energy of will, the force of morality, which
seizes the mastery of thee, and fills thee with indignation
against thyself and thy individual weaknesses ?

Man is nothing without an object. The great models of
humanity, such men as reveal to us what man is capable of,
have attested the truth of this proposition by their lives. They
had only one dominant passion the realization of the aim
which was the essential object of their activity. But the
object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is
nothing else than this subject's own, but objective, nature. If
it be an object common to several individuals of the same
species, but under various conditions, it is still, at least as to
the form under which it presents itself to each of them accord
ing to their respective modifications, their own, but objective,
nature.

Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but it is
an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, under
other conditions than to the Earth. Each planet has its own
sun. The Sun which lights and warms Uranus has no physical
(only an astronomical, scientific) existence for the earth; and
not only does the Sun appear different, but it really is another
sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The relation of the Sun
to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of the
Earth to itself, or to its own nature, for the measure of the
size and of the intensity of light which the Sun possesses as
the object of the Earth, is the measure of the distance, which
determines the peculiar nature of the Earth. Hence each
planet has in its sun the mirror of its own nature.

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 5

In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man "becomes
acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the
self- consciousness of man. We know the man by the object,
by his conception of what is external to himself; in it his
nature becomes evident; this object is his manifested nature,
his true objective ego. And this is true not merely of spiritual,
but also of sensuous objects. Even the objects which are
the most remote from man, because they are objects to him,
and to the extent to which they are so, are revelations of human
nature. Even the moon, the sun, the stars, call to man Tv^Oi
veavrov. That he sees them, and so sees them, is an evidence
of his own nature. The animal is sensible only of the beam
which immediately affects life ; while man perceives the ray,
to him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man alone
has purely intellectual, disinterested joys and passions; the
eye of man alone keeps theoretic festivals. The eye which
looks into the starry heavens, which gazes at that light, alike
useless and harmless, having nothing in common with the
earth and its necessities this eye sees in that light its own
nature, its own origin. The eye is heavenly in its nature.
Hence man elevates himself above the earth only with the eye ;
hence theory begins with the contemplation of the heavens.
The first philosophers were astronomers. It is the heavens
that admonish man of his destination, and remind him that he
is destined not merely to action, but also to contemplation.

The absolute to man is his own nature. The power
of the object over him is therefore the power of his own
nature. Thus the power of the object of feeling is the power
of feeling itself; the power of the object of the intellect is the
power of the intellect itself; the power of the object of the will
is the power of the will itself. The man who is affected by
musical sounds, is governed by feeling; by the feeling, that is,
which finds its corresponding element in musical sounds. But
it is not melody as such, it is only melody pregnant with
meaning and emotion, which has power over feeling. Feeling
is only acted on by that which conveys feeling, i. e., by itself,
its own nature. Thus also the will; thus, and infinitely more,
the intellect. . Whatever kind of object, therefore, we are at
any time conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious
of our own nature; w r e can affirm nothing without affirming
ourselves. And since to will, to feel, to think, are perfections,
essences, realities, it is impossible that intellect, feeling, and

6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

will should feel or perceive themselves as limited, finite powers,
i. e., as worthless, as nothing. For finiteness and nothingness
are identical; finiteness is only a euphemism for nothingness.
Finiteness is the metaphysical, the theoretical nothingness
the pathological, practical expression. What is finite to the
understanding is nothing to the heart. But it is impossible
that we should he conscious of will, feeling, and intellect, as
finite powers, because every perfect existence, every original
power and essence, is the immediate verification and affirmation
of itself. It is impossible to love, will, or think, without per
ceiving these activities to be perfections impossible to feel
that one is a loving, willing, thinking being, without expe
riencing an infinite joy therein. Consciousness consists in a
being becoming objective to itself; hence it is nothing apart,
nothing distinct from the being which is conscious of itself.
How could it otherwise become conscious of itself? It is
therefore impossible to be conscious of a perfection as an
imperfection, impossible t feel feeling limited, to think thought
limited.

Consciousness is self- verification, self-affirmation, self-love,
joy in one's own perfection. Consciousness is the charac
teristic mark of a perfect nature ; it exists only in a self-suf
ficing, complete being. Even human vanity attests this truth.
A man looks in the glass ; he has complacency in his appear
ance. This complacency is a necessary, involuntary conse
quence of the completeness, the beauty of his form. A beau
tiful form is satisfied in itself; it has necessarily joy in itself
in self-contemplation. This complacency becomes vanity
only when a man piques himself on his form as being his
individual form, not when he admires it as a specimen of
human beauty in general. It is fitting that he should admire
it thus ; he can conceive no form more beautiful, more sublime
than the human.* Assuredly every being loves itself, its exist
ence and fitly so. To exist is a good. Quidquid essentia
dignum est, scientia dignum est. Everything that exists has
value, is a being of distinction at least this is true of the

* Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. 1. i ) And this is
no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides him
self; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms
of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only the absolute, the
perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 7

species: hence it asserts, maintains itself. But the highest
form of self-assertion, the form which is itself a superiority, a
perfection, a hliss, a good, is consciousness.

Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature
of man, rests on a delusion, an error. It is true that the
human being, as an individual, can and must herein consists
his distinction from the brute feel and recognise himself to
be limited ; but he can become conscious of his limits, his
finiteness, only because the perfection, the infinitude of his
species is perceived by him, whether as an object of feeling,
of conscience, or of the thinking consciousness. If he makes
his own limitations the limitations of the species, this arises
from the mistake that he identifies himself immediately with
the species a mistake which is intimately connected with the
individual's love of ease, sloth, vanity, and egoism. For a
limitation which I know to be merely mine humiliates,
shames, and perturbs me. Hence to free myself from this
feeling of shame, from this state of dissatisfaction, I convert
the limits of my individuality into the limits of human nature
in general. What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehen
sible to others ; why should I trouble myself further ? it is no
fault of mine ; my understanding is not to blame, but the under
standing of the race. But it is a ludicrous and even culpable
error to define as finite and limited what constitutes the essence
of man, the nature of the species, which is the absolute nature
of the individual. Every being is sufficient to itself. No
being can deny itself, i.e., its own nature ; no being is a
limited one to itself. Rather, every being is in and by itself
infinite has its God, its highest conceivable being, in itself.
Every limit of a being is cognisable only by another being out
of and above him. The life of the ephemera is extraordinarily
short in comparison with that of longer lived creatures; but
nevertheless, for the ephemera this short life is as long as a
life of years to others. The leaf on which the caterpillar lives
is for it a world, an infinite space.

That which makes a being what it is is its talent, its power,
its wealth, its adornment. How can it possibly hold its existence
non-existence, its wealth poverty, its talent incapacity? If the
plants had eyes, taste and judgment, each plant would declare
its own flower the most beautiful; for its comprehension, its taste,
would reach no farther than its natural power of production.
What the productive power of its nature has brought forth

8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

as the highest, that must also its taste, its judgment, recognise
and affirm as the highest. What the nature affirms, the under
standing, the taste, the judgment, cannot deny ; otherwise
the understanding, the judgment, would no longer he the un
derstanding and judgment of this particular being, hut of some
other. The measure of the nature is also the measure of the
understanding. If the nature is limited, so also is the feel
ing, so also is the understanding. But to a limited heing its
limited understanding is not felt to he a limitation ; on the
contrary, it is perfectly happy and contented with this under
standing ; it regards it, praises and values it, as a glorious,
divine power ; and the limited understanding, on its part, values
the limited nature whose understanding it is. Each is exactly
adapted to the other ; how should they he at issue with each
other ? A being's understanding is its sphere of vision. As
far as thou seest, so far extends thy nature ; and conversely.
The eye of the brute reaches no farther than its needs, and its
nature no farther than its needs. And so far as thy nature
reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so far
art thou God. The discrepancy between the understanding and
the nature, between the power of conception and the power of
production in the human consciousness, on the one hand is
merely of individual significance and has not a universal appli
cation ; and, on the other hand, it is only apparent. He who
having written a bad poem knows it to be bad, is in his intel
ligence, and therefore in his nature, not so limited as he who,
having written a bad poem, admires it and thinks it good.

It follows, that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivest
and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought ; if thou
feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of
the power of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect
objective to itself; the object of feeling is feeling objective to
itself. If thou hast no sensibility, no feeling for music, thou
perceivest in the finest music nothing more than in the wind
that whistles by thy ear, or than in the brook which rushes
past thy feet. What then is it which acts on thee when thou
art affected by melody? What dost thou perceive in it? What
else than the voice of thy own heart ? Feeling speaks only to
feeling ; feeling is comprehensible only by feeling, that is, by
itself for this reason, that the object of feeling is nothing else
than feeling. Music is a monologue of emotion. But the
dialogue of philosophy also is in truth only a monologue of

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 9

the intellect; thought speaks only to thought. The splendours
of the crystal charm the sense ; but the intellect is interested
only in the laws of crystallization. The intellectual only is the
object of the intellect.*

All therefore which, in the point of view of metaphysical,
transcendental speculation and religion, has the significance
only of the secondary, the subjective, the medium, the organ,
has in truth the significance of the primary, of the essence, of
the object itself. If, for example, feeling is the essential organ
of religion, the nature of God is nothing else than an expression
of the nature of feeling. The true but latent sense of the
phrase, " Feeling is the organ of the divine," is, feeling is
the noblest, the most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How
couldst thou perceive the divine by feeling, if feeling were not
itself divine in its nature ? The divine assuredly is known only
by means of the divine God is known only by himself. The
divine nature which is discerned by feeling, is in truth nothing
else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself feeling
intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own plenitude.

It is already clear from this that where feeling is held to be
the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion,
the external data of religion lose their objective value. And
thus, since feeling has been held the cardinal principle in
religion, the doctrines of Christianity, formerly so sacred, have
lost their importance. If from this point of view some value is
still conceded to Christian ideas, it is a value springing
entirely from the relation they bear to feeling; if another
object would excite the same emotions, it would be just as
welcome. But the object of religious feeling is become a
matter of indifference, only because when once feeling has
been pronounced to be the subjective essence of religion, it in
fact is also the objective essence of religion, though it may not
be declared, at least directly, to be such. I say directly; for
indirectly this is certainly admitted, when it is declared that
feeling, as such, is religious, and thus the distinction between
specifically religious and irreligious, or at least non-reli
gious, feelings, is abolished, a necessary consequence of the
point of view in which feeling only is regarded as the organ of
the divine. For on what other ground than that of its essence,

* " The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what
proceeds thence." Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natiirl. Religion, iv. Abth. 8.)

B 3

10 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

its nature, dost them hold feeling to be the organ of the infi
nite, the divine heing ? And is not the nature of feeling in
general, also the nature of every special feeling, he its object
what it may? What, then, makes this feeling religious? A
given object? Not at all; for this object is itself a religious
one only when it is not an object of the cold understanding
or memory, but of feeling. What then ? The nature of
feeling a nature of which every special feeling, without dis
tinction of objects, partakes. Thus, feeling is pronounced to
be religious, simply because it is feeling ; the ground of its
religiousness is its own nature lies in itself. But is not
feeling thereby declared to be itself the absolute, the divine ?
If feeling in itself is good, religious, i.e., holy, divine, has not
feeling its God in itself?

But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of feel
ing, but at the same time seekest to express thy feeling truly,
without introducing by thy reflection any foreign element,
what remains to thee but to distinguish between thy individual
feeling and the general nature of feeling; to separate the
universal in feeling from the disturbing, adulterating influ
ences with which feeling is bound up in thee, under thy indi
vidual conditions ? Hence what thou canst alone contem
plate, declare to be the infinite, and define as its essence, is
merely the nature of feeling. Thou hast thus no other defi
nition of God than this ; God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling.
Every other God, whom thou supposest, is a God thrust
upon thy feeling from without. Feeling is atheistic in the
sense of the orthodox belief, which attaches religion to
an external object ; it denies an objective God it is itself
God. In this point of view, only the negation of feeling is
the negation of God. Thou art simply too cowardly or too narrow
to confess in words what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered
by outward considerations, still in bondage to vulgar empiricism,
incapable of comprehending the spiritual grandeur of feeling,
thou art terrified before the religious atheism of thy heart. By
this fear thou destroyest the unity of thy feeling with itself,
in imagining to thyself an objective being distinct from thy
feeling, and thus necessarily sinking back into the old questions
and doubts is there a God or not? questions and doubts which
vanish, nay, are impossible, where feeling is defined as the
essence of religion. Feeling is thy own inward power, but
at the same time a power distinct from thee, and independent

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. ] 1

of thee ; it is in thee, above thee : it is itself that which con
stitutes the objective in thee thy own being which impresses
thee as another being ; in short, thy God. How wilt thou then
distinguish from this objective being within thee another objec
tive being? how wilt thou get beyond thy feeling?

But feeling has here been adduced only as an example. It is
the same with every other power, faculty, potentiality, reality,
activity the name is indifferent which is denned as the
essential organ of any object. Whatever is a subjective
expression of a nature is simultaneously also its objective
expression. Man cannot get beyond his true nature. He
may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals
of another so-called higher kind, but he can never get loose
from his species, his nature; the conditions of being, the
positive final predicates which he gives to these other indivi
duals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from
his own nature qualities in which he in truth only images
and projects himself. There may certainly be thinking beings
besides men on the other planets of our solar system. But by
the supposition of such beings we do not change our standing
point we extend our conceptions quantitatively, not qualita
tively. For as surely as on the other planets there are the same
laws of motion, so surely are there the same laws of percep
tion and thought as here. In fact, we people the other planets,
not that we may place there different beings from ourselves,
but more beings of our own or of a similar nature.*

* Verisimile est, noil minus quam geometrise, etiam musicae oblecta-
tionem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque
animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum his nostris conti-
gisset ea voluptas, quse sola ex sono percipi potest ? Christ. Hugenius,
(Cosmotheor, 1, i.)

12 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

2. The Essence of Religion considered generally.

WHAT we have hitherto been maintaining generally, even
with regard to sensational impressions, of the relation between
subject and object, applies especially to the relation between
the subject and the religious object.

In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the object
is distinguishable from consciousness of self; but in religion,
consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide.
The object of the senses is out of man, the religious object is
within him, and therefore as little forsakes him as his self-
consciousness or his conscience; it is the intimate, the closest
object. "God," says Augustine, for example, "is nearer,
more related to us, and therefore more easily known by us,
than sensible, corporeal things."* The object of the senses is
in itself indifferent independent of the disposition or of the
judgment; but the object of religion is a selected object; the
most excellent, the first, the supreme being ; it essentially pre
supposes a critical judgment, a discrimination between the
divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of
adoration and that which is not worthy. f And here may be
applied, without any limitation, the proposition: the object of
any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature
taken objectively. Such as are a man's thoughts and disposi
tions, such is his God; so much worth as a man has, so much
and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self-
consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his
God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two
are identical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart
and soul; and conversely, God is the manifested inwa/d
nature, the expressed self of a man, religion the solemn un
veiling of a man's hidden treasures, the revelation of his inti
mate thoughts, the open confession of his love- secrets.

* De Genesi ad litteram, 1. v. c. 16.

f Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse,
quam colere. M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 13

But when religion consciousness of God is designated as
the self- consciousness of man, this is not to be understood as
affirming that the religious man is directly aware of this
identity ; for, on the contrary, ignorance of it is fundamental
to the peculiar nature of religion. To preclude this miscon
ception, it is better to say, religion is man's earliest and also
indirect form of self-knowledge. Hence, religion everywhere
precedes philosophy, as in the history of the race, so also in
that of the individual. Man first of all sees his nature as if
out of himself, before he finds it in himself. His own nature
is in the first instance contemplated by him as that of another
being. Keligion is the childlike condition of humanity; but
the child sees his nature man out of himself; in childhood
a man is an object to himself, under the form of another man.
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in this :
that what by an earlier religion was regarded as objective, is
now recognised as subjective ; that is, what was formerly con
templated and worshipped as God is now perceived to be
something human. What was at first religion becomes at a
later period idolatry; man is seen to have adored his own
nature. Man has given objectivity to himself, but has not
recognised the object as his own nature : a later religion takes
this forward step; every advance in religion is therefore a
deeper self-knowledge. But every particular religion, while
it pronounces its predecessors idolatrous, excepts itself and
necessarily so, otherwise it would no longer be religion from
the fate, the common nature of all religions : it imputes only
to other religions what is the fault, if fault it be, of religion in
general. Because it has a different object, a different tenour,
because it has transcended the ideas of preceding religions, it
erroneously supposes itself exalted above the necessary eternal
laws which constitute the essence of religion it fancies its
object, its ideas, to be superhuman. But the essence of reli
gion, thus hidden from the religious, is evident to the thinker,
by whom religion is viewed objectively, which it cannot be by
its votaries. And it is our task to show that the antithesis of
divine and human is altogether illusory, that it is nothing
else than the antithesis between the human nature in general,
and the human individual: that, consequently, the object and
contents of the Christian religion are altogether human.
Eeligion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to

14 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

liimself, or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his sub
jective nature) ;* hut a relation to it, viewed as a nature apart
from his own. The divine being is nothing else than the
human being, or, rather the human nature purified, freed from
the limits of the individual man, made objective i.e., contem
plated and revered as another, a distinct being. All the
attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the
human nature. f

In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the Divine
Being, this is admitted without hesitation, but by no means in
relation to the subject of these predicates. The negation of
the subject is held to be irreligion, nay, atheism; though not
so the negation of the predicates. But that which has no
predicates or qualities, has no effect upon me ; that which has
no effect upon me, has no existence for me. To deny all the
qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself.
A being without qualities is one which cannot become an object
to the mind ; and such a being is virtually non-existent.
Where man deprives God of all qualities, God is no longer
anything more to him than a negative being. To the truly
religious man, God is not a being without qualities, because
to him he is a positive, real being. The theory that God
cannot be denned, and consequently cannot be known by man,
is therefore the offspring of recent times, a product of modern
unbelief.

As reason is and can be pronounced finite only where man
regards sensual enjoyment, or religious emotion, or aesthetic
contemplation, or moral sentiment, as the absolute, the true; so
the proposition that God is unknowable or (indefinable can
only be enunciated and become fixed as a dogma, where this
object has no longer any interest for the intellect ; where the
real, the positive, alone has any hold on man, where the real

* The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the
sequel.

j" Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos ames, mais il les possede
sans bornes il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance,
quelque bonte, mais elles sont toutes entieres en Dieu. Leibnitz, (Theod.
Preface.) Nihil in anima esse putemus eximium, quod non etiam divinae
naturae proprium sit Quidquid a Deo alienum extra definitionem animse.
S. Gregorius Nyss. Est ergo, ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcher-
rima et maxima se ipsum nosse ; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cog-
noscet. Clemens Alex. (Psed. 1, iii. c. 1.)

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 15

alone has for him the significance of the essential, of the
absolute, divine object, but where at the same time, in contra
diction with this purely worldly tendency, there yet exist some
old remains of religiousness. On the ground that God is
unknowable, man excuses himself to what is yet remaining of
his religious conscience for his forgetfulness of God, his
absorption in the world : he denies God practically by his
conduct, the world has possession of all his thoughts and
inclinations, but he does not deny him theoretically, he does
not attack his existence ; he lets that rest. But this existence
does not affect or incommode him ; it is a merely negative
existence, an existence without existence, a self-contradictory
existence, a state of being, which, as to its effects, is not
distinguishable from non-being. The denial of determinate,
positive predicates concerning the divine nature, is nothing
else than a denial of religion, with, however, an appearance of
religion in its favour, so that it is not recognised as a denial ;
it is simply a subtle, disguised atheism. The alleged religious
horror of limiting God by positive predicates, is only the
irreligious wish to know nothing more of God, to banish God
from the mind. Dread of limitation is dread of existence.
All real existence, i.e., all existence which is truly such,
is qualitative, determinate existence. He who earnestly be
lieves in the Divine existence, is not shocked at the attribut
ing even of gross sensuous qualities to God. He who dreads
an existence that may give offence, who shrinks from the
grossness of a positive predicate, may as well renounce exis
tence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate quali
ties has not the courage and the strength to exist. Qualities
are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt of existence.
An existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an
insipidity, an absurdity. But there can be no more in God,
than is supplied by religion. Only where man loses his taste
for religion, and thus religion itself becomes insipid, does the
existence of God become an insipid existence an existence
without qualities.

There is, however, a still milder way of denying the Divine
predicates than the direct one just described. It is admitted
that the predicates of the divine nature are finite, and, more
particularly, human qualities, but their rejection is rejected;
they are even taken under protection, because it is necessary
to man to have a definite conception of God, and since he is

16 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

man, he can form no other than a human conception of him.
In relation to God, it is said, these predicates are certainly
without any objective validity ; but to me, if he is to exist
for me, he cannot appear otherwise than as he does appear to
me, namely, as a being with attributes analogous to the
human. But this distinction between what God is in himself,
and what he is for me, destroys the peace of religion, and is
besides in itself an unfounded and untenable distinction.
I cannot know whether God is something else in himself or
for himself, than he is for me ; what he is to me, is to me all
that he is. For me, there lies in these predicates under w T hich
he exists for me, what he is in himself, his very nature ; he
is for me what he can alone ever be for me. The religious
man finds perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation
to himself; of any other relation he knows nothing, for God
is to him what he can alone be to man. In the distinction
above stated, man takes a point of view above himself, i.e.
above his nature, the absolute measure of his being ; but this
transcendentalism is only an illusion ; for I can make the
distinction between the object as it is in itself, and the object
as it is for me, only where an object can really appear other
wise to me, not where it appears to me such as the absolute
measure of my nature determines it to appear such as it
must appear to me. It is true that I may have a merely
subjective conception, i.e. one which does not arise out of
the general constitution of my species; but if my conception
is determined by the constitution of my species, the distinction
between what an object is in itself, and what it is for me
ceases; for this conception is itself an absolute one. The
measure of the species is the absolute measure, law, and
criterion of man. And, indeed, religion has the conviction
that its conceptions, its predicates of God, are such as every
man ought to have, and must have, if he would have the true
ones that they are the conceptions necessary to human
nature ; nay, further, that they are objectively true, repre
senting God as he is. To every religion the gods of other
religions are only notions concerning God, but its own con
ception of God is to it God himself, the true God God such
as he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a complete
Deity, a God without reservation ; it will not have a mere
phantasm of God ; it demands God himself. Religion gives
up its own existence when it gives up the nature of God;

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 17

it is no longer a truth, when it renounces the possession of
the true God. Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion;
but the distinction between object and conception between
God as he is in himself, and God as he is for me, is a
sceptical distinction, and therefore an irreligious one.

That which is to man the self- existent, the highest being,
to which he can conceive nothing higher that is to him the
Divine being. How then should he inquire concerning this
being, what He is in himself? If God were an object to the
bird, he would be a winged being : the bird knows nothing
higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged condition.
How ludicrous would it be if this bird pronounced : to me God
appears as a bird, but what he is in himself I know not. To
the bird the highest nature is the bird-nature ; take from him
the conception of this, and you take from him the conception
of the highest being. How, then, could he ask whether God
in himself were winged ? To ask whether God is in himself
what he is for me, is to ask whether God is God, is to lift
oneself above one's God, to rise up against him.

Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious predicates
are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of a man,
there has doubt, has unbelief obtained the mastery of faith.
And it is only the inconsequence of faint-heartedness and
intellectual imbecility which does not proceed from this idea
to the formal negation of the predicates, and from thence to
the negation of the subject to which they relate. If thou
doubtest the objective truth of the predicates, thou must also
doubt the objective truth of the subject whose predicates they
are. If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms, the subject of
of them is an anthropomorphism too. If love, goodness, per
sonality, &c., are human attributes, so also is the subject
which thou pre-supposest, the existence of God, the belief
that there is a God, an anthropomorphism a pre-supposition
purely human. Whence knowest thou that the belief in a God
at all is not a limitation of man's mode of conception ? Higher
beings and thou supposest such are perhaps so blest in
themselves, so at unity with themselves, that they are not
hi ino- in suspense between themselves and a yet higher being.
To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessed
ness, and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of
unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing of this unhappi-
ness ; they have no conception of that which they are not.

18 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou
thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent
being, because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than
benevolence and wisdom ; and thou believest that God exists,
that therefore he is a subject whatever exists is a subject,
whether it be denned as substance, person, essence, or other
wise because thou thyself existest, art thyself a subject. Thou
knowest no higher human good, than to love, than to be good
and wise ; and even so thou knowest no higher happiness than
to exist, to be a subject; for the consciousness of all reality,
of all bliss, is for thee bound up in the consciousness of being
a subject, of existing. God is an existence, a subject to thee,
for the same reason that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a per
sonal being. The distinction between the divine predicates
and the divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject,
the existence, does not appear an anthropomorphism, because
the conception of it is necessarily involved in thy own exist
ence as a subject, whereas the predicates do appear anthropo
morphisms, because their necessity the necessity that God
should be conscious, wise, good, &c. is not an immediate
necessity, identical with the being of man, but is evolved by
his self- consciousness, by the activity of his thought. I am a
subject, I exist, whether I be wise or unwise, good .or bad. To
exist is to man the first datum; it constitutes the very idea
of the subject; it is presupposed by the predicates. Hence, man
relinquishes the predicates, but the existence of God is to him
a settled, irrefragable, absolutely certain, objective truth. But,
nevertheless, this distinction is merely an apparent one. The
necessity of the subject lies only in the necessity of the predi
cate. Thou art a subject only in so far as thou art a human
subject; the certainty and reality of thy existence lie only in
the certainty and reality of thy human attributes. What the
subject is, lies only in the predicate; the predicate is the truth
of the subject the subject only the personified, existing predi
cate, the predicate conceived as existing. Subject and predi
cate are distinguished only as existence and essence. The
negation of the predicates is therefore the negation of the sub
ject. What remains of the human subject when abstracted
from the human attributes ? Even in the language of common
life the divine predicates Providence, Omniscience, Omni
potence are put for the divine subject.

The certainty of the existence of God, of which it has been
said that it is as certain, nay, more certain to man than his

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. ]9

own existence, depends only on the certainty of the qualities
of God it is in itself no immediate certainty. To the Chris
tian the existence of the Christian God only is a certainty ; to
the heathen that of the heathen God only. The heathen did
not doubt the existence of Jupiter, because he took no offence
at the nature of Jupiter, because he could conceive of God
under no other qualities, because to him these qualities were a
certainty, a divine reality. The reality of the predicate is the
sole guarantee of existence.

Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately conceives
to be real (that is, to have an objective existence), because,
originally, only the real is true to him true in opposition to
what is merely conceived, dreamed, imagined. The idea of
being, of existence, is the original idea of truth; or, originally,
man makes truth dependent on existence, subsequently, exist-
tence dependent on truth. Now God is the nature of man
regarded as absolute truth, the truth of man; but God, or,
what is the same thing, religion, is as various as are the con
ditions under which man conceives this his nature, regards it
as the highest being. These conditions, then, under which
man conceives God, are to him the truth, and for that
reason they are also the highest existence, or rather they are
existence itself; for only the emphatic, the highest existence,
is existence, and deserves this name. Therefore, God is an
existent, real being, on the very same ground that he is a
particular, definite being; for the qualities of God are nothing
else than the essential qualities of man himself, and a
particular man is what he is, has his existence, his reality,
only in his particular conditions. Take away from the Greek
the quality of being Greek, and you take away his existence.
On this ground, it is true that for a definite positive
religion that is, relatively the certainty of the existence of
God is immediate; for just as involuntarily, as necessarily,
as the Greek was a Greek, so necessarily were his gods
Greek beings, so necessarily were they real, existent beings.
Religion is that conception of the nature of the world and
of man which is essential to, i. e., identical with, a man's
nature. But man does not stand above this his necessary
conception; on the contrary, it stands above him; it animates,
determines, governs him. The necessity of a proof, of a
middle term -to unite qualities with existence, the possibility
of a doubt, is abolished. Only that which is apart from
my own being is capable of being doubted by me. How then

20 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

can I doubt of God, who is my being ? To doubt of God is
to doubt of myself. Only when God is thought of abstractly,
w r hen his predicates are the result of philosophic abstraction,
arises the distinction or separation between subject and predi
cate, existence and nature arises the fiction that the existence
or the subject is something else than the predicate, something
immediate, indubitable, in distinction from the predicate, which
is held to be doubtful. But this is only a fiction. A God who has
abstract predicates has also an abstract existence. Existence,
being, varies with varying qualities.

The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly evidenced
by the progressive development of religion, which is identical
with the progressive development of human culture. So long
as man is in a mere state of nature, so long is his god a mere
nature-god a personification of some natural force. Where
man inhabits houses, he also encloses his gods in temples.
The temple is only a manifestation of the value which man
attaches to beautiful buildings. Temples in honour of reli
gion are in truth temples in honour of architecture. With
the emerging of man from a state of savagery and wildness to
one of culture, with the distinction between what is fitting for
man and what is not fitting, arises simultaneously the dis
tinction between that which is fitting and that which is not
fitting for God. God is the idea of majesty, of the highest
dignity : the religious sentiment is the sentiment of supreme
fitness. The later more cultured artists of Greece were the
first to embody in the statues of the gods the ideas of dignity,
of spiritual grandeur, of imperturbable repose and serenity.
But why were these qualities in their view attributes, predicates
of God ? Because they were in themselves regarded by the
Greeks as divinities. Why did those artists exclude all disgust
ing and low passions ? Because they perceived them to be un
becoming, unworthy, unhuman, and consequently ungodlike.
The Homeric gods eat and drink; that implies: eating and
drinking is a divine pleasure. Physical strength is an attri
bute of the Homeric gods : Zeus is the strongest of the gods.
Why ? Because physical strength, in and by itself, was regarded
as something glorious, divine. To the ancient Germans the
highest virtues were those of the warrior ; therefore, their
supreme god was the god of war, Odin, war, " the original or
oldest law." Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divine-
ness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine Being.

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 21

Thus what theology and philosophy have held to he God, the
Absolute, the Infinite, is not God ; hut that which they have
held not to be God, is God : namely, the attribute, the quality,
whatever has reality. Hence, he alone is the true atheist to
whom the predicates of the Divine Being, for example, love,
wisdom, justice, are nothing; not he to whom merely the sub
ject of these predicates is nothing. And in no wise is the
negation of the subject necessarily also a negation of the
predicates considered in themselves. These have an intrinsic,
independent reality ; they force their recognition upon man by
their very nature ; they are self-evident truths to him ; they
prove, they attest themselves. It does not follow that good
ness, justice, wisdom, are chimseras, because the existence of
God is a chimsera, nor truths because this is a truth. The idea
of God is dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence ; a
God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God ; but
the converse does not hold. The fact is not that a quality is
divine because God has it, but that God has it because it is in
itself divine : because without it God would be a defective
being. Justice, wisdom, in general every quality which con
stitutes the divinity of God, is determined and known by itself,
independently, but the idea of God is determined by the quali
ties which have thus been previously judged to be worthy of
the divine nature ; only in the case in which I identify God
and justice, in which I think of God immediately as the reality
of the idea of justice, is the idea of God self-determined. But
if God as a subject is the determined, while the quality, the
predicate is the determining, then in truth the rank of the god
head is due not to the subject, but to the predicate.

Not until several, and those contradictory, attributes are
united in one being, and this being is conceived as personal
the personality being thus brought into especial promi
nence not until then is the origin of religion lost sight of, is
it forgotten that what the activity of the reflective power has
converted into a predicate distinguishable or separable from
the subject, was originally the true subject. Thus the Greeks
and Romans deified accidents as substances : virtues, states of
mind, passions, as independent beings. Man, especially the
religious man, is to himself the measure of all things, of all
reality. Whatever strongly impresses a man, whatever pro
duces an unusual effect on his mind, if it be only a peculiar,
inexplicable sound or note, he personifies as a divine being.

22 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Eeligion embraces all the objects of the world ; everything ex
isting has been an object of religious reverence ; in the nature
and consciousness of religion there is nothing else than what
lies in the nature of man and in his consciousness of himself
and of the world. Religion has no material exclusively its
own. In Rome even the passions of fear and terror had their
temples. The Christians also made mental phenomena into
independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of things,
the passions which governed them into powers which governed
the world, in short, predicates of their own nature, whether reco
gnized as such or not, into independent subjective existences.
Devils, cobolds, witches, ghosts, angels, were sacred truths as
long as the religious spirit held undivided sway over mankind.
In order to banish from the mind the identity of the divine
and human predicates, and the consequent identity of the divine
and human nature, recourse is had to the idea that God, as the
absolute, real Being, has an infinite fulness of various predi
cates, of which we here know only a part, and those such as
are analogous to our own ; while the rest, by virtue of which
God must thus have quite a different nature from the human
or that which is analogous to the human, we shall only know
in the future that is, after death. But an infinite plenitude
or multitude of predicates which are really different, so different
that the one does not immediately involve the other, is realized
only in an infinite plenitude or multitude of different beings or
individuals. Thus the human nature presents an infinite abun
dance of different predicates, and for that very reason it presents
an infinite abundance of different individuals. Each new man
is a new predicate, a new phasis of humanity. As many as are
the men, so many are the powers, the properties of humanity.
It is true that there are the same elements in every individual,
but under such various conditions and modifications that they
appear new and peculiar. The mystery of the inexhaustible ful
ness of the divine predicates is therefore nothing else than the
mystery of human nature considered as an infinitely varied, in
finitely modifiable, but, consequently, phenomenal being. Only
in the realm of the senses, only in space and time, does there
exist a being of really infinite qualities or predicates. Where
there are really different predicates, there are different times.
One man is a distinguished musician, a distinguished author,
a distinguished physician ; but he cannot compose music, write
books, and perform cures in the same moment of time. Time,

THE ESSENCE OF KELIGION. 23

and not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting op-
posites, contradictories, in one and the same subject. But
distinguished and detached from the nature of man, and com
bined with the idea of God, the infinite fulness of various
predicates is a conception without reality, a mere phantasy,
a conception derived from the sensible world, but without the
essential conditions, without the truth of sensible existence, a
conception which stands in direct contradiction with the Divine
Being considered as a spiritual, i.e., an abstract, simple, single
being ; for the predicates of God are precisely of this character,
that one involves all the others, because there is no real dif
ference between them. If, therefore, in the present predicates
I have not the future, in the present God not the future God,
then the future God is not the present, but they are two dis
tinct beings.* But this distinction is in contradiction with
the unity and simplicity of the theological God. Why is a
given predicate a predicate of God ? Because it is divine in
its nature ; i.e., because it expresses no limitation, no defect,
Why are other predicates applied to Him ? Because, however
various in themselves, they agree in this, that they all alike ex
press perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can conceive innu
merable predicates of God, because they must all agree with
the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must have in common
that which constitutes every single predicate a divine attribute.
Thus it is in the system of Spinoza. He speaks of an infinite
number of attributes of the divine substance, but he specifies
none except Thought and Extension. Why? because itis a matter
of indifference to know them; nay, becausethey are in themselves
indifferent, superfluous : for with all these innumerable predi
cates, I yet always mean to say the same thing as when I speak
of thought and extension. Why is Thought an attribute of sub
stance ? Because, according to Spinoza, it is capable of being
conceived by itself, because it expresses something indivisible,
perfect, infinite. Why Extension or Matter? For the same
reason. Thus, substance can have an indefinite number of predi-
dicates, because it is not their specific definition, their difference,

* For religious faith there is no other distinction between the present
and future God than that the former is an object of faith, of conception, of
imagination, while the latter is to be an object of immediate, that is, personal,
sensible perception. In this life, and in the next, he is the same God j
but in the one lie is incomprehensible, in the other, comprehensible.

24} THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

but their identity, their equivalence, which makes them attributes
of substance. Or rather, substance has innumerable predicates
only because (how strange!) it has properly no predicate; that
is, no definite, real predicate. The indefinite unity which is the
product of thought, completes itself by the indefinite multi
plicity which is the product of the imagination. Because the
predicate is not multum, it is multa. In truth, the positive pre
dicates are Thought and Extension. In these two, infinitely
more is said than in the nameless innumerable predicates;
for they express something definite, in them I have something.
But substance is too indifferent, too apathetic, to be some
thing ; that is, to have qualities and passions; that it may
not be something, it is rather nothing.

Now, when it is shown that what the subject is, lies entirely
in the attributes of the subject; that is, that the predicate is the
true subject; it is also proved that if the divine predicates are
attributes of the human nature, the subject of those predicates
is also of the human nature. But the divine predicates are
partly general, partly personal. The general predicates are
the metaphysical, but these serve only as external points of
support to religion; they are not the characteristic definitions
of religion. It is the personal predicates alone which con
stitute the essence of religion in which the Divine Being is
the object of religion. Such are, for example, that God is a
Person, that he is the moral Law- giver, the Father of man
kind, the Holy One, the Just, the Good, the Merciful. It is
however at once clear, or it will at least be clear in the sequel,
with regard to these and other definitions, that, especially as
applied to a personality, they are purely human definitions, and
that consequently man in religion in his relation to God is
in relation to his own nature; for to the religious sentiment
these predicates are not mere conceptions, mere images, which
man forms of God, to be distinguished from that which God
is in himself, but truths, facts, realities. Eeligion knows
nothing of anthropomorphisms; to it they are not anthropo
morphisms. It is the very essence of religion, that to it these
definitions express the nature of God. They are pronounced
to be images only by the understanding, which reflects on
religion, and which while defending them yet before its own
tribunal denies them. But to the religious sentiment God is
a real Father, real Love and Mercy; for to it he is a real,
living, personal being, and therefore his attributes are also

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 25

living and personal. Nay, the definitions which are the most
sufficing to the religious sentiment, are precisely those which
give the most offence to the understanding, and which in the
process of reflection on religion it denies. Religion is essen
tially emotion; hence, objectively also, emotion is to it neces
sarily of a divine nature. Even anger appears to it an
emotion not unworthy of God, provided only there he a reli
gious motive at the foundation of this anger.

But here it is also essential to observe, and this phenomenon
is an extremely remarkable one, characterising the very core
of religion, that in proportion as the divine subject is in
reality human, the greater is the apparent difference between
God and man; that is, the more, by reflection on religion, by
theology, is the identity of the divine and human denied,
and the human, considered as such, is depreciated.* The
reason of this is, that as what is positive in the conception of
the divine being can only be human, the conception of man,
as an object of consciousness can only be negative. To
enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all,
man must be nothing. But he desires to be nothing in him
self, because what he takes from himself is not lost to him,
since it is preserved in God. Man has his being in God;
why then should he have it in himself? Where is the- neces
sity of positing the same thing twice, of having it twice? What
man withdraws from himself, what he renounces in .himself, he
only enjoys in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God.

The monks made a vow of chastity to God ; they morti
fied the sexual passion in themselves, but therefore they
had in Heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the image of woman
an image of love. They could the more easily dispense
with real woman, in proportion as an ideal woman was an
object of love to them. The greater the importance they
attached to the denial of sensuality, the greater the import
ance of the Heavenly Virgin for them : she was to them in
the place of Christ, in the stead of God. The more the

* Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitude notari, quin
inter eos major sit dissimilitude notanda. Later. Cone. can. 2. (Summa
Omn. Cone. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction
between man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the
religious speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between Some
thing and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens ; for only in Nothing is all com
munity with other beings abolished.

C

26 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

sensual tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the
God to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever is made an
offering to God has an especial value attached to it ; in it God
is supposed to have especial pleasure. That which is the
highest in the estimation of man, is naturally the highest in
the estimation of his God what pleases man, pleases God
also. The Hebrews did not offer to Jehovah unclean, ill-
conditioned animals; on the contrary, those which they most
highly prized, which they themselves ate, were also the food
of God (cibus Dei, Levit. iii. 2.) Wherever, therefore, the
denial of the sensual delights is made a special offering, a
sacrifice well-pleasing to God, there the highest value is
attached to the senses, and the sensuality which has been
renounced is unconsciously restored, in the fact that God
takes the place of the material delights which have "been
renounced. The nun weds herself to God ; she has a heavenly
bridegroom, the monk a heavenly bride. But the heavenly
virgin is only a sensible presentation of a general truth, having
relation to the essence of religion. Man denies as to himself
only what he attributes to God. Eeligion abstracts from man,
from the world ; but it can only abstract from the limitations,
from the phenomena, in short, from the negative, not from the
essence, the positive, of the world and humanity: hence, in the
very abstraction and negation it must recover that from which
it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And thus, in reality,
whatever religion consciously denies always supposing that
what is denied by it is something essential, true, and conse
quently incapable of being ultimately denied it unconsciously
restores in God. Thus, in religion man denies his reason ; of him
self he knows nothing of God, his thoughts are only worldly,
earthly; he can only believe what God reveals to him. But
on this account the thoughts of God are human, earthly
thoughts: like man, He has plans in His mind, he accommo
dates himself to circumstances and grades of intelligence, like
a tutor with his pupils ; he calculates closely the effect of his
gifts and revelations; he observes man in all his doings; he
knows all things, even the most earthly, the commonest, the
most trivial. In brief, man in relation to God denies his own
knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God.
Man gives up his personality; but in return, God, the Al
mighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person ; he denies
human dignity, the human ego; but in return God is to him

THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION. 27

a selfish, egoistical being, who in all things seeks only Him
self, his own honour, his own ends; he represents God as
simply seeking the satisfaction of his own selfishness, while
yet He frowns on that of every other being; his God is the
very luxury of egoism.* Religion further denies goodness as
a quality of human nature; man is wicked, corrupt, incapable
of good ; but on the other hand, God is only good the Good
Being. Man's nature demands as an object goodness, personi
fied as God; but is it not hereby declared that goodness is an
essential tendency of man ? If my heart is wicked, my
understanding perverted, how can I perceive and feel the holy
to be holy, the good to be good? Could I perceive the
beauty of a fine picture, if my mind were resthetically an
absolute piece of perversion ? Though I may not be a painter,
though I may not have the power of producing what is beau
tiful myself, I must yet have esthetic feeling, aBsthetic com
prehension, since I perceive the beauty that is presented
to me externally. Either goodness does not exist at all
for man, or, if it does exist, therein is revealed to the indi
vidual man the holiness and goodness of human nature. That
which is absolutely opposed to my nature, to which I am
united by no bond of sympathy, is not even conceivable or
perceptible by me. The Holy is in opposition to me only as
regards the modifications of my personality, but as regards my
fundamental nature it is in unity with me. The Holy is a
reproach to my sinfulness; in it I recognise myself as a sinner;
but in so doing, while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I
am not, but ought to be, and what, for that very reason, I,
according to my destination, can be; for an "ought" which
has no corresponding capability, does not affect me, is a
ludicrous chimsera without any true relation to my mental
constitution. But when I acknowledge goodness as my desti
nation, as my law, I acknowledge it, whether consciously or
unconsciously, as my own nature. Another nature than my
own, one different in quality, cannot touch me. I can per
ceive sin as sin, only when I perceive it to be a contradiction
of myself with myself that is, of my personality with my

* Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. " God can only
love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for himself. In
creating man, God seeks his own ends, his own glory,"&c. Yid. P. Bayle.
Ein Beit-rag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh. p. 104 107.

c 2

28 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

fundamental nature. As a contradiction of the absolute, con
sidered as another being, the feeling of sin is inexplicable,
unmeaning.

The distinction between Augustinianism and Pelagianism
consists only in this, that the former expresses after the manner
of religion what the latter expresses after the manner of ra
tionalism. Both say the same thing, both vindicate the good
ness of man; but Pelagianism does it directly, in a rationalistic
and moral form, Augustinianism indirectly, in a mystical, that
is, a religious form.* For that which is given to man's God,
is in truth given to man himself; what a man declares con
cerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself. Augus
tinianism would be a truth, and a truth opposed to Pela
gianism, only if man had the devil for his God, and with
the consciousness that he was the devil, honoured, reverenced,
and worshipped him as the highest being. But so long as
man adores a good being as his God, so long does he con
template in God the goodness of his own nature.

As with the "doctrine of the radical corruption of human na
ture, so is it with the identical doctrine, that man can do
nothing good, i. e., in truth, nothing of himself by his own
strength. For the denial of human strength and spontaneous
moral activity to be true, the moral activity of God must also
be denied ; and we must say, with the oriental nihilist or pan
theist : the Divine being is absolutely without will or action,
indifferent, knowing nothing of the discrimination between evil
and good. But he who defines God as an active being, and
not only so, but as morally active and morally critical, as a
being who loves, works, and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and
condemns evil, he who thus defines God, only in appearance
denies human activity, in fact making it the highest, the most

* Pelagianism denies God, religion isti tantam tribuunt potestatem
voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de Nat. et Grat. cont.
Pelagium, c, 58.) It has only the Creator, i. e., Nature, as a "basis, not the
Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment in a word, it denies God ;
but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, since it makes
him a being not needing God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this
subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, 1. c. c. 33.) Augusti
nianism denies man ; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the
level of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man.
The former puts man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place
of man ; both lead to the same result the distinction is only apparent, a
pious illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism ; what to
the latter" is a subject, is to the former an object.

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 29

real activity. He who makes God act humanly, declares human
activity to be divine; he says: a god who is not active, and
not morally or humanly active, is no god; and thus he makes
the idea of the Godhead dependent on the idea of activity, that
is, of human activity, for a higher he knows not.

Man this is the mystery of religion projects his being into
objectivity,* and then again makes himself an object to this
projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he
thinks of himself, is an object to himself, but as the object of
an object, of another being than himself. Thus here. Alan
is an object to God. That man is good or evil is not indif
ferent to God ; no ! He has a lively, profound interest in
man's being good ; he wills that man should be good, happy
for without goodness there is no happiness. Thus the
religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of human
activity, by making his dispositions and actions an object to
God, by making man the end of God for that which is an
object to the mind is an end in action ; by making the divine
activity a means of human salvation. God acts, that man may
be good and happy. Thus man, while he is apparently
humiliated to the lowest degree, is in truth exalted to the
highest. Thus, in and through God, man has in view himself
alone. It is true that man places the aim of his action in
God, but God has no other aim of action than the moral and
eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim
than himself. The divine activity is not distinct from the
human.

How could the divine activity work on me as its object, nay,
work in me, if it were essentially different from me ; how could
it have a human aim, the aim of ameliorating and blessing
man, if it were not itself human ? Does not the purpose
determine the nature of the act ? When man makes his moral
improvement an aim to himself, he has divine resolutions,
divine projects; but also, when God seeks the salvation of
man, He has human ends and a human mode of activity, corre-

* The religious, the original mode in which man becomes objective to
himself, is (as is clearly enough explained in this work) to be distinguished
from the mode in which this occurs in reflection and speculation ; the latter
is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary as necessary as art, as
speech. With the progress of time, it is true, theology coincides with
religion.

30 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

spending to these ends. Thus in God manh as only his own
activity as an object. But, for the very reason that he regards
his own activity as objective, goodness only as an object, he
necessarily receives the impulse, the motive, not from himself,
but from this object. He contemplates his nature as external
to himself, and this nature as goodness; thus it is self-evident,
it is mere tautology to say, that the impulse to good comes
only from thence where he places the good.

God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from him
self; hence man can do nothing of himself, all goodness
comes from God. The more subjective God is, the more
completely does man divest himself of his subjectivity, because
God is, per se, his relinquished self, the possession of
which he however again vindicates to himself. As the
action of the arteries drives the blood into the extremities,
and the action of the veins brings it back again, as life in
general consists in a perpetual systole and diastole ; so is it in
religion. In the religious systole man propels his own nature
from himself, he throws himself outward; in the religious
diastole he receives the rejected nature into his heart again.
God alone is the being who acts of himself, this is the force
of repulsion in religion ; God is the being who acts in me,
with me, through me, upon me, for me, is the principle of my
salvation, of my good dispositions and actions, consequently
my own good principle and nature, this is the force of attrac
tion in religion. t

The course of religious development which has been generally
indicated, consists specifically in this, that man abstracts more
and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself.
This is especially apparent in the belief in revelation. That
which to a later age or a cultured people is given by nature or
reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured people, given
by God. Every tendency of man, however natural even the
impulse to cleanliness, w T as conceived by the Israelites as a
positive divine ordinance. From this example we again see
that God is lowered, is conceived more entirely on the type of
ordinary humanity, in proportion as man detracts from himself.
How can the self-humiliation of man go further than when he
disclaims the capability of fulfilling spontaneously the require
ments of common decency ?* The Christian religion, on the

* Deut. xxiii. 12, 13.

THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 31

other hand, distinguished the impulses and passions of man ac
cording to their quality, their character ; it represented only
good emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as revela
tions, operations that is, as dispositions, feelings, thoughts,
of God; for what God reveals is a quality of God himself: that
of which the heart is full, overflows the lips, as is the effect
such is the cause, as the revelation, such the "being who re
veals himself. A God who reveals himself in good dispositions
is a God whose essential attribute is only moral perfection.
The Christian religion distinguishes inward moral purity from
external physical purity; the Israelites identified the two.* In
relation to the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is one
of criticism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do
nothing except what was commanded by God ; he was without
will even in external things ; the authority of religion extended
itself even to his food. The Christian religion, on the other
hand, in all these external things, made man dependent on
himself, i. e., placed in man what the Israelite placed out of
himself, in God. Israel is the most complete presentation of
positivism in religion. In relation to the Israelite, the Chris
tian is an esprit fort, a free-thinker. Thus do things change.
What yesterday was still religion, is no longer such to-day;
and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.

* See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the
Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages.

32 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

PART I.

THE TRUE OK ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF
RELIGION.

CHAPTER II.
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

RELIGION is the disuniting of man from himself: he sets
God before him as the antithesis of himself. God is not what
man is man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man
the finite being ; God is perfect, man imperfect ; God eternal,
man temporal ; God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sin
ful. God and man are extremes : God is the absolutely posi
tive, the sum of all realities ; man the absolutely negative,
comprehending all negations.

But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature.
Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, this differencing
of God and man, with which religion begins, is a differencing
of man with his own nature.

The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent
from this, that if the divine nature, which is the object of
religion, were really different from the nature of man, a
division, a disunion could not take place. If God is really a
different being from myself, why should his perfection trouble
me ? Disunion exists only between beings who are at variance,
but who ought to be one, who can be one, and who conse
quently in nature, in truth, are one. On this general ground,
then, the nature with which man feels himself in disunion,
must be inborn, immanent in himself, but at the same time it
must be of a different character from that nature or power
which gives him the feeling, the consciousness of reconciliation,
of union with God, or, what is the same thing, with himself.

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 33

This nature is nothing else than the intelligence the reason
or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man, as a
being not human, i.e., not personally human, is the objective
nature of the understanding. The pure, perfect divine nature
is the self- consciousness of the understanding, the conscious
ness which the understanding has of its own perfection. The
understanding knows nothing of the sufferings of the heart ;
it has no desires, 110 passions, no wants, and for that reason,
no deficiencies and weaknesses, as the heart has. Men in
whom the intellect predominates, who with one-sided but all
the more characteristic definiteness, embody and personify for
us the nature of the understanding, are free from the anguish
of the heart, from the passions, the excesses of the man who
has strong emotions ; they are not passionately interested in
any finite, i.e., particular object; they do not give themselves
in pledge; they are free. "To want nothing, and by this
freedom from wants to become like the immortal Gods ;"
"not to subject ourselves to things but things to us;'
" all is vanity ;" these and similar sayings are the mottoes
of the men who are governed by abstract understanding. The
understanding is that part of our nature which is neutral, im
passible, not to be bribed, not subject to illusions the pure,
passionless light of the intelligence. It is the categorical,
impartial consciousness of the fact as fact, because it is itself
of an objective nature. It is the consciousness of the uncon-
tradictory, because it is itself the uncontradictory unity, the
source of logical identity. It is the consciousness of law,
necessity, rule, measure, because it is itself the activity of law,
the necessity of the nature of things under the form of spon
taneous activity, the rule of rules, the absolute measure, the
measure of measures. Only by the understanding can man
judge and act in contradiction with his dearest human, that is,
personal feelings, when the God of the understanding, law,
necessity, right, commands it. The father who as a judge
condemns his own son to death because he knows him to be
guilty, can do this only as a rational not as an emotional being.
The understanding shews us the faults and weaknesses even of
our beloved ones ; it shews us even our own. It is for this reason
that it so often throws us into painful collision with ourselves,
with our own hearts. AVe do not like to give reason the upper
hand : we are too tender to ourselves to carry out the true, but
hard, relentless verdict of the understanding. The under

c 3

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

standing is the power which has relation to species : the heart
represents particular circumstances, individuals, the under
standing, general circumstances, universals ; it is the super
human, i.e., the impersonal power in man. Only by and in
the understanding has man the power of abstraction from
himself, from his subjective being, of exalting himself to
general ideas and relations, of distinguishing the object from
the impressions which it produces on his feelings, of regarding
it in and by itself without reference to human personality.
Philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, in short, science
in general, is the practical proof, because it is the product, of
this truly infinite and divine activity. Religious anthropomor
phisms, therefore, are in contradiction with the understanding;
it repudiates their application to God : it denies them. But
this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial, passionless,
is nothing else than the nature of the understanding itself
regarded as objective.

God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not
materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of
thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, incomprehensible
the abstract, negative being: he is known, i.e., becomes an
object, only by abstraction and negation (via negationis).
Why ? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of the
thinking power, or in general, of the power or activity, name
it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, of mind,
of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is, (for the idea
of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of
understanding, every other spirit being a spectre of the imagi
nation,) no other intelligence which man can believe in or con
ceive, than that intelligence which enlightens him, which is
active in him. He can do nothing more than separate the in
telligence from the limitations of his own individuality. The
"infinite spirit," in distinction from the finite, is therefore
nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the limits
of individuality and corporeality, for individuality and cor
poreality are inseparable, intelligence posited in and by itself.
God, said the schoolmen, the Christian fathers, and long before
them the heathen philosophers, God is immaterial essence,
intelligence, spirit, pure understanding. Of God as God, no
image can be made ; but canst thou frame an image of mind ?
Has mind a form ? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the
most incapable of representation ? God is incomprehensible ;

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35

but knowest thou the nature of the intelligence ? Hast thou
searched out the mysterious operation of thought, the hidden
nature of self-consciousness ? Is not self-consciousness the
enigma of enigmas ? Did not the old mystics, schoolmen,
and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the
divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus,
in truth, identify the nature of God with the nature of man ?*
God as God as a purely thinkable being, an object of the in
tellect, is thus nothing else than the reason in its utmost
intensification become objective to itself. It is asked what is the
understanding or the reason? The answer is found in the idea
of God. Everything must express itself, reveal itself, make itself
objective, affirm itself. God is the reason expressing, affirming
itself as the highest existence. To the imagination, the reason
is the revelation of God ; but to the reason, God is the reve
lation of the reason; since what reason is, what it can do, is first
made objective in God. God is a need of the intelligence, a neces
sary thought the highest degree of the thinking power. " The
reason cannot rest in sensuous things ;" it can find contentment
only when it penetrates to the highest, first, necessary being,
which can be an object to the reason alone. Why ? Because with
the conception of this being it first completes itself, because only
in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature of reason
existent, the highest step of the thinking power attained; and it
is a general truth, that we feel a blank, a void, a want in our
selves, and are consequently unhappy and unsatisfied, so long as
we have not come to the last degree of a power, to that quo nili'd
majus coqitarl potest, so long as we cannot bring our inborn
capacity for this or that art, this or that science, to the utmost
proficiency. For only in the highest proficiency is art truly
art ; only in its highest degree is thought truly thought, reason.
Only when thy thought is God, dost thou truly think, rigorously
speaking; for only God is the realized, consummate, exhausted
thinking power. Thus in conceiving God, man first conceives

* Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when he
was still in some measure a heathen, says (1. iii. o. 12), that the highest
good of man consists in the mind, or in the reason. On the other hand, in
his Libr. Retractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian and
theologian, he revises (1. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows : Verius dk-
issem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit, tanquam suinmo
bono suo. Bat is there any distinction here ? Where my highest good is,
is not there my nature also ?

36 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

reason as it truly is, though, by means of the imagination he
conceives this divine nature as distinct from reason, because as
a being affected by external things he is accustomed always to
distinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he
applies the same process to the conception of the reason, thus,
for an existence in reason, in thought, substituting an exis
tence in space and time, from which he had, nevertheless, pre
viously abstracted it. God, as a metaphysical being, is the
intelligence satisfied in itself, or rather, conversely, the intelli
gence satisfied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute being,
is God as a metaphysical being. Hence all metaphysical
predicates of God are real predicates only when they are re
cognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to the un
derstanding.

The understanding is that which conditionates and co
ordinates all things, that which places all things in reciprocal
dependence and connexion, because it is itself immediate and
unconditioned ; it inquires for the cause of all things, because
it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that which itself
is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce and cooi-
s tract, can regard all besides itself as derived ; just as only
that which exists for its own sake can view and treat other
things as means and instruments. The understanding is thus
the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all
things from God, as the first cause , it finds the world, with
out an intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless
chance ; that is, it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the
efficient and the final cause of the w r oiid the existence of the
world is only then clear and comprehensible when it sees the
explanation of that existence in the source of all clear and
intelligible ideas, i.e. in itself. The being that works with
design, towards certain ends, i.e. with understanding, is alone
the being that to the understanding has immediate certitude,
self- evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, no
purpose, must have tbe cause of its existence in the design of
another, and that an intelligent being. And thus the under
standing posits its own nature as the causal, first, premun-
dane existence : i.e. being in rank the first, but in time the
last, it makes itself the first in time also.

The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality.
That which is opposed to the understanding, that which is
self-contradictory, is nothing; that which contradicts reason,

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 37

contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of reason
to connect with the idea of the highest reality the limitations
of definite time and place; and hence reason denies these of God,
as contradicting his nature. The reason can only believe in a
God who is accordant with its own nature, in a God who is not
beneath its own dignity, who on the contrary is a realization of
its own nature : i.e., the reason believes only in itself, in the
absolute reality of its own nature. The reason is not dependent
on God, but God on the reason. Even in the age of miracles
and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes itself, at
least formally, the criterion of divinity. God is all and can
do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence ; but never
theless he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts
himself, i.e. reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is
contrary to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence
stands the higher power of reason ; above the nature of God
the nature of the understanding, as the criterion of that which
is to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the posi
tive and negative. Canst thou believe in a God who is an
unreasonable and wicked being ? No, indeed ; but why not ?
Because it is in contradiction wdth thy understanding to accept
a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then dost
thou affirm, what is an object to thee, in God ? Thy own
understanding. God is thy highest idea, the supreme effort
of thy understanding, thy highest power of thought. God is
the sum of all realities, i.e. the sum of all affirmations of the
understanding. That which I recognise in the understanding
as essential, I place in God as existent : God is, what the
understanding thinks as the highest. But in what I per
ceive to be essential, is revealed the nature of my under
standing, is shown the power of my thinking faculty.

Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most
real being of the old onto- theology. " Fundamentally," says
onto-theology, "we cannot conceive God otherwise than by
attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which we
find in ourselves."* Our positive, essential qualities, our
realities, are therefore the realities of God, but in us they
exist with, in God without, limits. But what then withdraws
the limits from the realities, what does away with the limits ?
The understanding. What, according to this, is the nature

* Kant Yorles. iiber d. philos. Eeligionsl. Leipzig. 1817. p. 39.

38 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

conceived without limits, but the nature of the understanding
releasing, abstracting itself from all limits ? As thou thiiikest
God, such is thy thought ; the measure of thy God is the
measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest God as
limited, thy understanding is limited ; if thou conceivest God
as unlimited, thy understanding is unlimited. If, for example,
thou conceivest God as a corporeal being, corporeality is the
boundary, the limit of thy understanding, thou canst con
ceive nothing without a body ; if on the contrary thou deniest
corporeality of God, this is a corroboration and proof of the
freedom of thy understanding from the limitation of corpo
reality. In the unlimited divine nature thou representest only
thy unlimited understanding. And when thou deelarest this
unlimited being the ultimate essence, the highest being, thou
sayest in reality nothing else than this : the etre supreme, the
highest being, is the understanding.

The understanding is further the self-subsistent and indepen
dent being. That which has no understanding is not self-
subsistent, is dependent. A man without understanding is a
man without will. He who has no understanding allows
himself to be deceived, .imposed upon, used as an instrument
by others. How shall he whose understanding is the tool of
another, have an independent will ? Only he who thinks, is
free and independent. It is only by the understanding that
man reduces the things around and beneath him to mere
means of his own existence. In general : that only is self-
subsistent and independent which is an end to itself, an object
to itself. That which is an end and object to itself, is for
that very reason in so far as it is an object to itself no
longer a means and object for another being. To be without
understanding is, in one word, to exist for another, to be an
object: to have understanding is to exist for oneself, to be a
subject. But that which 110 longer exists for another, but for
itself, rejects all dependence on another being. It is true, we,
as physical beings, depend on the beings external to us, even
as to the modifications of thought ; but in so far as we think,
in the activity of the understanding as such, we are depen
dent on no other being. Activity of thought is spontaneous
activity. " When I think, I am conscious that my ego in me
thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore, that
this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside
of me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i.e.

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 39

that I exist by myself, without being a predicate of another
being."* Although we always need the air, yet as natural
philosophers we convert the air from an object of our physical
need into an object of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e.
into a mere thing for us. In breathing I am the object of the
air, the air the subject ; but when I make the air an object of
thought, of investigation, when I analyze it, I reverse this
relation, I make myself the subject, the air an object. But
that which is the object of another being is dependent. Thus
the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object
for air and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light
are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life, in
general, is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the
objective and subjective relation. We consume the air, and
are consumed by it; we enjoy, and are enjoyed. The
understanding alone enjoys all things without being itself
enjoyed ; it is the self- enjoying, self-sufficing existence the
absolute subject the subject which cannot be reduced to the
object of another being, because it makes all things objects,
predicates of itself, which comprehends all things in itself
because it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things.
That is dependent, the possibility of whose existence lies
out of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of
its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradic
tion of an existence at once dependent and independent, the
contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and out of
itself. The understanding alone is free from this and other
contradictions of life ; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent,
perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-existentf Thinking
is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, exist
ence out of self; life is to give from oneself, thought is to
take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world, exist
ence in self is God. To think is to be God. The act of
thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal gods from
all external limitations and necessities of life.

* Kant, 1. c. p. 80.

f To guard against mistake I observe, that I do not apply to the un
derstanding the expression, self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like
character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the
stand-point of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in
order to shew that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the onto-
theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding.

40 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To
the understanding the consciousness of its unity and universality
is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else than the
consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i.e. that which is
accordant with the understanding is to it an absolute, universally
valid, law ; it is impossible to the understanding to think that
what is self- contradictory, false, irrational, can anywhere be
true, and, conversely, that what is true, rational, can anywhere
be false and irrational. " There may be intelligent beings
who are not like me, and yet I am certain that there are no
intelligent beings who know laws and truths different from
those which I recognise ; for every mind necessarily sees that
two and two make four, and that one must prefer one's fiiend
to one's dog."* Of an essentially different understanding from
that which affirms itself in man, I have not the remotest
conception, the faintest adumbration. On the contrary, every
understanding which I posit as different from my own, is only
a position of my own understanding, i.e. an idea of my own,
a conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus
expresses my understanding. What I think, that I myself
do, of course only in purely intellectual matters ; what I think
of as united, I unite ; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish ;
what I think of as abolished, as negatived, that I myself
abolish and negative. For example, if I conceive an under
standing in which the intuition or reality of the object is
immediately united with the thought of it, I actually unite
it ; my understanding or my imagination is itself the power
of uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be
possible for me to conceive them united whether this con
ception be clear or confused if I did not unite them in
myself? But whatever may be the conditions of the under
standing which a given human individual may suppose as
distinguished from his own, this other understanding is only
the understanding which exists in man in general the under
standing conceived apart from the limits of this particular indi
vidual. Unity is involved in the idea of the understanding.

* Malebranche. (See the author's Geschichte der Philos. I. Bd.
p. 322.) Exstaretne alibi di versa ab hac ratio ? censereturque injustum
aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac pra9clarum
habetur ? Certe uec verisimile nee omnino possibile. Chr. Hugenii.
(Cosmotheoros, lib. i.)

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 41

The impossibility for the understanding to think two supreme
beings, two infinite substances, two Gods, is the impossibility
for the understanding to contradict itself, to deny its own
nature, to think of itself as divided.

The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is
immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality.
Finiteness in the metaphysical sense rests on the distinction
of the existence from the essence, of the individual from the
species ; infinitude, on the unity of existence and essence.
Hence, that is finite which can be compared with other beings
of the same species ; that is infinite which has nothing like
itself, which consequently does not stand as an individual
under a species, but is species and individual in one, essence
and existence in one. But such is the understanding ; it has
its essence in itself, consequently, it has nothing together with
or external to itself which can be ranged beside it ; it is
incapable of being compared, because it is itself the source of
all combinations and comparisons ; immeasurable, because it is
the measure of all measures, we measure all things by the
understanding alone ; it can be circumscribed by no higher
generalization, it can be ranged under no species, because it
is itself the principle of all generalizing, of all classification,
because it circumscribes all things and beings. The definitions
which the speculative philosophers and theologians give of
God, as the being in whom existence and essence are not
separable, who himself is all the attributes which he has, so
that predicate and subject are with him identical, all these
definitions are thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the
understanding.

Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary
being. Reason exists because only the existence of the reason
is reason ; because, if there were no reason, no consciousness,
all would be nothing; existence would be equivalent to non-
existence. Consciousness first founds the distinction between
existence and non-existence. In consciousness is first revealed
the value of existence, the value of nature. Why, in general,
does something exist? why does the world exist? on the
simple ground that if something did not exist, nothing would
exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason;
thus the world exists because it is an absurdity that the w r orld
should not exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence is
found the true reason of its existence, in the groundlessness

42 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

of the supposition that it were not, the reason that it is.
Nothing, non-existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational.
Existence alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; exist
ence is, because only existence is reason and truth ; existence
is the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious
existence, of life ? The need of life. But to whom is it a
need ? To that which does not live. It is not a being who
saw that made the eye : to one who saw already, to what
purpose would be the eye ? No ! only the being who saw
not needed the eye. We are all come into the world without
the operation of knowledge and will ; but we are come that
knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the
world ? Out of necessity ; not out of a necessity which lies
in another being distinct from itself that is a pure contra
diction, but out of its own inherent necessity ; out of the
necessity of necessity; because without the world there would
be no necessity ; without necessity, no reason, no under
standing. The nothing, out of which the world came, is
nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity,
as the speculative philosophers express themselves nothing
is the cause of the world ; but a nothing which abolishes
itself, i.e. a nothing which could not have existed if there had
been no world. It is true that the world springs out of a
want, out of privation, but it is false speculation to make
this privation an ontological being : this want is simply the
want which lies in the supposed non-existence of the world.
Thus the world is only necessary out of itself and through
itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of
reason. The reason, as the sum of all realities, for what are
all the glories of the world without light, much more external
light without internal light ? the reason is the most indispen
sable being the profoundest and most essential necessity. In
the reason first lies the self-consciousness of existence, self-
conscious existence ; in the reason is first revealed the end,
the meaning of existence. Reason is existence objective to
itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency of things. That
which is an object to itself is the highest, the final being :
that which has power over itself is almighty.

GOD AS A MOKAL BEING, OR LAW. 43

CHAPTEK III.
GOD AS A MOBAL BEING, OR LAW.

GOD as God the infinite, universal, non- anthropomorphic
being of the understanding, has no more significance for reli
gion than a fundamental general principle has for a special
science; it is merely the ultimate point of support, as it were,
the mathematical point, of religion. The consciousness of
human limitation or nothingness which is united with the idea
of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness; on
the contrary, it characterizes sceptics, materialists, and pan
theists. The belief in God at least in the God of religion
33 only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and mate
rialism, the belief in man is lost, at least in man such as
he is presupposed in religion. As little then as religion has
any influential belief in the nothingness of man,* so little has
it any influential belief in that abstract being with which the
consciousness of this nothingness is united. The vital ele
ments of religion are those only which make man an object to
man. To deny man, is to deny religion.

It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should
be distinct from man; but it is also, nay, yet more its in
terest, that this object should have human attributes. That
he should be a distinct being concerns his existence only; but
that he should be human concerns his essence. If he be of a
different nature, how can his existence or non-existence be of
any importance to man ? How can he take so profound an
interest in an existence in which his own nature has no par
ticipation ?

To give an example. "When I believe that the human

* In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of man
before God, is the anger of God ; for as the love of God is the affirmation,
his anger is the negation of man. But even this anger is not taken in
earnest. " God ... is not really angry. He is not thoroughly in earnest
even when we think that he is angry, and punishes."- Luther (T. viii.
p. 208).

44 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to
me; in that case, he needs a Saviour himself." And thus, out
of the need for salvation, is postulated something transcending
human nature, a being different from man. But no sooner is
this being postulated than there arises the yearning of man
after himself, after his own nature, and man is immediately
re-established. " Here is God, who is not man and never yet

became man. But this is not a God for me That would

be a miserable Christ to me, who should be nothing but

a purely separate God and divine person without hu
manity. No, my friend, where thou givest me God, thou must
give me humanity too."*

In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest
good. But how could he find consolation and peace in God,
if God were an essentially different being ? How can I share
the peace of a being if I am not of the same nature with him ?
If his nature is different from mine, his peace is essentially
different, it is no peace for me. How then can I become a
partaker of his peace, if I am not a partaker of his nature; but
how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really of a dif
ferent nature ? Every being experiences peace only in its
own element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus,
if man feels peace in God, he feels it only because in God he
first attains his true nature, because here, for the first time, he
is with himself, because everything in which he hitherto sought
peace, and which he hitherto mistook for his nature, was alien
to him. Hence, if man is to find contentment in God, he must
find himself in God. " No one will taste of God, but as He
wills, namely in the humanity of Christ; and if thou dost
not find God thus, thou wilt never have rest."f " Everything
finds rest on the place in which it was born. The place where
I was born is God. God is my father-land. Have I a father
in God ? Yes, I have not only a father, but I have myself in
Him ; before I lived in myself, I lived already in God."J

A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the un
derstanding, does not satisfy religion, is not the God of religion.

* Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8. Erklar.

f Luther. (Sammtliche Schriften und Werke. Leipzig, 1729, fol.
T. iii. p. 589. It is according to this edition that references are given
throughout the present work.)

Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg,
1621, p. 81.

GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 45

The understanding is interested not only in man, but in the
things out of man, in universal Nature. The intellectual man
forgets even himself in the contemplation of Nature. The Chris
tians scorned the pagan philosophers because, instead of think
ing of themselves, of their own salvation, they had thought
only of things out of themselves. The Christian thinks only
of himself. By the understanding an insect is contemplated
with as much enthusiasm as the image of God man. The
understanding is the absolute indifference and identity of all
things and beings. It is not Christianity, not religious enthu
siasm, but the enthusiasm of the understanding that we have
to thank for botany, mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astro
nomy. The understanding is universal, pantheistic, the
love of the universe ; but the grand characteristic of reli
gion, and of the Christian religion especially, is, that it is
thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man for him
self, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature, that
is, of subjective human nature; for it is true that the under
standing also affirms the nature of man, but it is his
objective nature, which has reference to the object for the
sake of the object, and the manifestation of w r hich is science.
Hence it must be something entirely different from the nature
of the understanding which is an object to man in religion, if
he is to find contentment therein, and this something will neces
sarily be the very kernel of religion.

Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God,
that which in religion, and especially in the Christian religion, has
the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God as a morally
perfect being is nothing else than the realized idea, the ful
filled law of morality, the moral nature of man posited as
the absolute being ; man's own nature, for the moral God re
quires man to be as He himself is : Be ye holy for I am holy;
man's own conscience, for how could he otherwise tremble
before the divine Being, accuse himself before him, and make
him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?

But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral nature,
especially as an abstract being separate from man, leaves us
cold and empty, because we feel the distance, the chasm between
ourselves and this being ; it is a dispiriting consciousness, for
it is the consciousness of our personal nothingness, and of the
kind which is the most acutely felt moral nothingness. The
consciousness of the divine omnipotence and eternity in oppo-

46 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

*

sition to my limitation in space and time does not afflict me :
for omnipotence does not command me to be myself omnipo
tent, eternity, to be myself eternal. But I cannot have the
idea of moral perfection without at the same time being con
scious of it as a law for me. Moral perfection depends, at
least for the moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the
will it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive
perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, which is
itself law, without at the same time regarding it as an
object of will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. The conception
of the morally perfect being, is no merely theoretical, inert
conception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imita
tion, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; for
while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells me to
my face, without any flattery, what I am not.* And religion
renders this disunion all the more painful, all the more terrible,
that it sets man's own nature before him as a separate nature,
and moreover as a personal being, who hates and curses sinners,
and excludes them from his grace, the source of all salvation
and happiness.

Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this
state of disunion between himself and the perfect being, from
the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing sense of
his own nothingness? How does he blunt the fatal sting of
sin ? Only by this ; that he is conscious of love as the
highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards the
Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a being
of the understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even sub
jective human being (that is, as having sympathy with indi
vidual man.)

The understanding judges only according to the stringency
of law; the heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient,
relenting, KCIT avOpuTrov. No man is sufficient for the law
which moral perfection sets before us; but for that reason,
neither is the law sufficient for man, for the heart. The law
condemns ; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. The
law affirms me only as an abstract being, love, as a real

* " That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit,
humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man,
when he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature." Kant,
Kritik der prakt. Yernunft. Fourth edition, p. 132.

GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 47

being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man;
the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am
worthless.* The law holds man in bondage; love makes him
free.

Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle
of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the
sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual, the
divine and the human. Love is God himself, and apart from
it there is no God. Love makes man God, and God man.
Love strengthens the weak, and weakens the strong, abases
the high and raises the lowly, idealizes matter and materializes
spirit. Love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit
and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre
eminent spirit is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the
point of view of spirit, to deny matter from the point of view
of matter. Love is materialism ; immaterial love is a
chimsera. In the longing of love after the distant object, the
abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of sensuousness.
But love is also the idealism of nature, love is also spirit,
esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love
alone gives the plant its corolla. And what wonders does not
love work in our social life ! What faith, creed, opinion
separates, love unites. Love even, humorously enough,
identifies the high noblesse with the people. What the old
mystics said of God, that he is the highest and yet the com
monest being, applies in truth to love, and that not a visionary,
imaginary love no! a real love, a love which has flesh and
blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living.

Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood,
for only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood
commit. A merely moral being cannot forgive what is con
trary to the law of morality. That which denies the law, is
denied by the law. The moral judge, who does not infuse
human blood into his judgment, judges the sinner relentlessly,
inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded as a sin-pardoning
being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral, but as more than
a moral being in a word, as a human being. The negation or
annulling of sin is the negation of abstract moral rectitude, the

* Omnes peccavimus ..... . Parricidse cum lege cseperunt et illis

facinus pcena monstravit. Seneca. "The law destroys us." Luther,
(Th. xvi. s. 320).

48 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

positing of love, mercy, sensuous life. Not abstract beings
no! only sensuous, living beings, are merciful. Mercy is
the justice of sensuous life.* Hence, God does not forgive
the sins of men as the abstract God of the understanding, but
as man, as the God made flesh, the visible God. God as man
sins not, it is true, but he knows, he takes on himself, the
sufferings, the wants, the needs of sensuous beings. The
blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins in the eyes of God;
it is only his human blood that makes God merciful, allays
his anger; that is, our sins are forgiven us, because we are no
abstract beings, but creatures of flesh and blood.f

* " Das Rechtsgefiihl der Sinnlichkeit."

f " This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh and
blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in all things
like me, but without sin ; therefore he can have pity on my weakness.
Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). "The deeper we can bring Christ
into the flesh the better." (Ibid. s. 565). " God himself, when he is dealt
with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation is found in him,
but pure anger and disfavour." (Th. xv. s. 298.)

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 49

CHAPTEK IV.

THE MYSTEEY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE,
AS A BEING OF THE HEART.

IT is the consciousness of love by which man reconciles him
self with God, or rather with his own nature as represented in
the moral law. The consciousness of the divine love, or what
is the same thing, the contemplation of God as human, is the
mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is nothing else
than the practical, material manifestation of the human nature
of God. God did not "become man for his own sake; the need,
the want of man a want which still exists in the religious
sentiment was the cause of the Incarnation. God became
man out of mercy: thus he was in himself already a human
God before he became an actual man; for human want, human
misery, went to his heart. The Incarnation was a tear of the
divine compassion, and hence it was only the visible advent of
a Being having human feelings, and therefore essentially
human.

If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of God becom
ing man, it certainly appears a surprising, inexplicable, mar
vellous event. But the incarnate God is only the apparent
manifestation of deified man ; for the descent of God to man
is necessarily preceded by the exaltation of man to God. Man
was already in God, was already God himself, before God
became man, i. e., showed himself as man.* How otherwise
could God have become man? The old maxim, ex nihilo
niliilfit, is applicable here also. A king who has not the wel-

* " Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God as of
a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and comforting
namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such things as men are
wont to talk of with each other, that he rejoices, sorrows, and suffers, like
a man, for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of Christ."-
Luther (T. ii. p. 334).

D

50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

fare of his subjects at heart, who while seated on his throne
does not mentally live with them in their dwellings, who, in
feeling, is not, as the people say, " a common man," such a
king will not descend bodily from his throne to make his
people happy by his personal presence. Thus, has not the
subject risen to be a king, before the king descends to be a
subject? And if the subject feels himself honoured and made
happy by the personal presence of his king, does this feeling
refer merely to the bodily presence, and not rather to the mani
festation of the disposition, of the philanthropic nature which
is the cause of the appearance ? But that which in the truth
of religion is the cause, takes in the consciousness of religion
the form of a consequence ; and so here the raising of man to
God is made a consequence of the humiliation or descent of
God to man. God, says religion, made himself human that
he might make man divine.*

That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i. e., con
tradictory, in the proposition, " God is or becomes a man,"
arises only from the mingling or confusion of the idea or defi
nitions of the universal, unlimited, metaphysical being with
the idea of the religious God, i. e., the conditions of the under
standing with the conditions of the heart, the emotive nature ;
a confusion which is the greatest hinderance to the correct
knowledge of religion. But in fact the idea of the Incarnation
is nothing more than the human form of a God, who already
in his nature, in the profoundest depths of his soul, is a merciful
and therefore a human God.

The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the church
is, that it was not the first person of the Godhead who was
incarnate, but the second, who is the representative of man
in and before God; the second person being however in
reality, as will be shown, the sole, true, first person in religion.
And it is only apart from this distinction of persons, that the
God-man appears mysterious, incomprehensible, " speculative ;"
for, considered in connexion with it, the Incarnation is a

* " Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret." Augustinus (Serm.
ad Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however, (T. i. p. 334,) there is a passage
which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man " the image of
God, the likeness of God," he meant, says Luther, obscurely to intimate
that " God was to become man." Thus here the incarnation of God is
clearly enough represented as a consequence of the deification of man.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 51

necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation,
therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact, which
could be made known only by means of a revelation in the
theological sense, betrays the most crass religious materialism ;
for the Incarnation is a conclusion which rests on a very com
prehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse to attempt to
deduce the Incarnation from purely speculative, i. e., metaphy
sical, abstract grounds ; for metaphysics apply only to the first
person of the Godhead, who does not become incarnate, who is
not a dramatic person. Such a deduction would at the utmost
be justifiable if it were meant consciously to deduce from meta
physics the negation of metaphysics.

This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the
method of our philosophy and that of the old speculative
philosophy. The former does not philosophize concerning the
Incarnation as a peculiar, stupendous mystery, after the manner
of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour; on the contrary it
destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar supernatural
mystery ; it criticises the dogma and reduces it to its natural
elements, immanent in man, to its originating principle and
central point love.

The dogma presents to us two things God and love. God
is love : but what does that mean ? Is God something besides
love ? a being distinct from love ? Is it as if I said of an
affectionate human being, he is love itself? Certainly; other
wise I must give up the name God, which expresses a special
personal being, a subject in distinction from the predicate.
Thus love is made something apart : God out of love sent his
only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into insigni
ficance in the dark background God. It becomes merely a
personal, though an essential, attribute; hence it receives
both in theory and in feeling, both objectively and subjectively,
the rank simply of a predicate, not that of a subject, of the
substance ; it shrinks out of observation as a collateral, an
accident; at one moment it presents itself to me as some
thing essential, at another, it vanishes again. God appears
to me in another form besides that of love; in the form
of omnipotence, of a severe power not bound by love, a
power in which, though in a smaller degree, the devils
participate.

So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an essence,
so long there lurks in the background of love a subject, who

D 2

52 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

even without love is something "by himself, an unloving monster,
a diaholical being, whose personality separable and actually
separated from love, delights in the blood of heretics and unbe
lievers, the phantom of religious fanaticism. Nevertheless
the essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped in the
night of the religious consciousness, is love. Love determined
God to the renunciation of his divinity.* Not because of his
Godhead as such, according to which he is the subject in the
proposition God is love, but because of his love, of the pre
dicate, is it that he renounced his Godhead ; thus love is a
higher power and truth than Deity. Love conquers God. It
was love to which God sacrificed his divine majesty. And
what sort of love was that ? another than ours ? than that to
which we sacrifice life and fortune ? Was it the love of him
self? of himself as God? No ! it was love to man. But is
not love to man human love ? Can I love man without loving
him humanly, without loving him as he himself loves, if he
truly loves ? Would not love be otherwise a devilish love ?
The devil too loves man, but not for man's sake for his own ;
thus he loves man out of egotism, to aggrandize himself, to
extend his power. But God loves man for man's sake, i. e.,
that he may make him good, happy, blessed. Does he not
then love man, as the true man loves his fellow ? Has love a
plural? Is it not everywhere like itself? What then is the
true unfalsified import of the Incarnation, but absolute, pure
love, without adjunct, without a distinction between divine and
human love ? For though there is also a self-interested love
among men, still the true human love, which is alone worthy
of this name, is that which impels the sacrifice of self to another.
Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love?
Love ; for God as God has not saved us, but Love, which

* It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith
celebrated the Incarnation. Amor triumphat de Deo, says St. Bernard.
And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the God
head, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation ; although this self-nega
tion is in itself merely a conception of the imagination, for, looked at in
broad daylight, God does not negative himself 'in the Incarnation, but he
shews himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications
which modem rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have ad
vanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous concep
tions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still
less controverted.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 53

transcends the difference between the divine and human per
sonality. As God has renounced himself out of love, so we,
out of love, should renounce God ; for if we do not sacrifice
God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the pre
dicate of love, we have the God the evil being of religious
fanaticism.

While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth in
the Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the
dogma in its falsity, we have reduced the apparently super
natural and super-rational mystery to a simple truth inherent
in human nature : a truth which does not belong to the
Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly at least, belongs
more or less to every religion as such. For every religion
which has any claim to the name, presupposes that God is
not indifferent to the beings who worship him, that therefore
what is human is not alien to him, that, as an object of
human veneration, he is a human God. Every prayer dis
closes the secret of the Incarnation, every prayer is in fact
an incarnation of God. In prayer I involve God in human
distress, I make him a participator in my sorrows and wants.
God is not deaf to my complaints; he has compassion on
me; hence he renounces his divine majesty, his exaltation
above all that is finite and human; he becomes a man with
man; for if he listens to me, and pities me, he is affected
by my sufferings. God loves man i.e. God suffers from
man. Love does not exist without sympathy, sympathy does
not exist without suffering in common. Have I any sympathy
for a being without feeling ? No ! I feel only for that
which has feeling only for that which partakes of my nature,
for that in which I feel myself, whose sufferings I myself suffer.
Sympathy presupposes a like nature. The Incarnation Provi
dence, prayer, are the expression of this identity of nature in
God and man.*

It is true that theology, which is pre- occupied with the
metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditionedness, un-
changeableness, and the like abstractions, which express the
nature of the understanding, theology denies the possibility

* " Nos scimus affici Deum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere
lacrymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut scriptum in Psalmo LVI.
Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarum nostraruui." Melancthonis et
aliorum (Declam. T. iii. p. 286, p. 450).

54 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

that God should suffer, but in so doing it denies the truth of
religion.* For religion the religious man in the act of
devotion, believes in a real sympathy of the divine being in
his sufferings and wants, believes that the will of God can be
determined by the fervour of prayer, i.e. by the force of feel
ing, believes in a real, present fulfilment of his desire, wrought
by prayer. The truly religious man unhesitatingly assigns
his own feelings to God; God is to him a heart susceptible to
all that is human. The heart can betake itself only to the
heart; feeling can appeal only to feeling; it finds consolation
in itself, in its own nature alone.

The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been deter
mined from eternity, that it was originally included in the
plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical
mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the
nature of religion. " We need," says Lavater somewhere,
and quite correctly according to the religious sentiment, " an
arbitrary God." Besides, even according to this fiction, God
is just as much a being determined by man, as in the real,
present fulfilment consequent on the power of prayer; the
only difference is, that the contradiction with the unchange-
ableness and unconditionedness of God that which con
stitutes the difficulty is thrown back into the deceptive
distance of the past or of eternity. Whether God decides
on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion
of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago,
is fundamentally the same thing.

It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of a God
who can be determined by prayer, that is, by the force of
feeling, as an unworthy anthropomorphic idea. If we once
believe in a being who is an object of veneration, an object of
prayer, an object of affection, who is providential, who
takes care of man, in a Providence, which is not conceivable
without love, in a being, therefore, who is loving, whose motive

* St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words :
" Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, cui proprium est misereri
semper et parcere." (Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if compassion were not
suffering the suffering of love, it is true, the suffering of the heart. But
what does suffer, if not thy sympathising heart ? No love, no suffering.
The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common
bond of all beings.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 55

of action is love: we also believe in a being, who lias, if not
an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart. The religious
mind, as has been said, places everything in God, excepting
that alone which it despises. The Christians certainly gave
their God no attributes which contradicted their own moral
ideas, but they gave him without hesitation, and of necessity,
the emotions of love, of compassion. And the love which the
religious mind places in God is not an illusory, imaginary
love, but a real, true love. God is loved and loves again;
the divine love is only human love made objective, affirming
itself. In God love is absorbed in itself as its own ultimate
truth.

It may be objected to the import here assigned to the Incar
nation, that the Christian Incarnation is altogether peculiar,
that at least it is different (which is quite true in certain
respects, as will hereafter be apparent) from the incarnations
of the heathen deities, whether Greek or Indian. These latter
are mere products of men or deified men; but in Christianity
is given the idea of the true God ; here the union of the divine
nature with the human is first significant and " speculative."
Jupiter transforms himself into a bull; the heathen incar
nations are mere fancies. In paganism there is no more in
the nature of God than in his incarnate manifestation; in
Christianity, on the contrary, it is God, a separate, super
human being, who appears as man. But this objection is
refuted by the remark already made, that even the premiss of
the Christian Incarnation contains the human nature. God
loves man; moreover God has a Son; God is a father; the
relations of humanity are not excluded from God; the human
is not remote from God, not unknown to him. Thtfs here
also there is nothing more in the nature of God than in
the incarnate manifestation of God. In the Incarnation
religion only confesses, what in reflection on itself, as theo
logy, it will not admit; namely, that God is an altogether
human being. The Incarnation, the mystery of the " God-
man," is therefore no mysterious composition of contraries,
no synthetic fact, as it is regarded by the speculative re
ligious philosophy, which has a particular delight in con
tradiction; it is an analytic fact, a human word with a
human meaning. If there be a contradiction here, it lies
before the incarnation and out of it; in the union of provi
dence, of love, with deity ; for if this love is a real love, it is

56 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

not essentially different from our love, there are only our
limitations to be abstracted from it; and thus the Incarnation
is only the strongest, deepest, most palpable, open-hearted
expression of this providence, this love. Love knows not
how to make its object happier than by rejoicing it with its
personal presence, by letting itself be seen. To see the invi
sible benefactor face to face is the most ardent desire of love.
To see is a divine act. Happiness lies in the mere sight of
the beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And
the Incarnation has no other significance, no other effect, than
the indubitable certitude of the love of God to man. Love
remains, but the incarnation upon the earth passes away: the
appearance was limited by time and place, accessible to few;
but the essence, the nature which was manifested, is eternal
and universal. We can no longer believe in the manifestation
for its own sake, but only for the sake of the thing manifested ;
for to us there remains no immediate presence but that of
love.

The clearest, most irrefragable proof, that man in religion
contemplates himself as the object of the divine Being, as the
end of the divine activity, that thus in religion he has relation
only to his own nature, only to himself, the clearest, most
irrefragable proof of this is the love of God to man, the
basis and central point of religion. God for the sake of man
empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside his Godhead.
Herein lies the elevating influence of the Incarnation ; the
highest, the perfect being humiliates, lowers himself for the
sake of man. Hence, in God I learn to estimate my own
nature ; I have value in the sight of God ; the divine sig-
nifican'ce of my nature is become evident to me. How
can the worth of man be more strongly expressed than when
God, for man's sake, becomes a man, when man is the end,
the object of the divine love ? The love of God to man
is an essential condition of the divine Being : God is a
God who loves me who loves man in general. Here lies
the emphasis, the fundamental feeling of religion. The
love of God makes me loving ; the love of God to man
is the cause of man's love to God ; the divine love causes,
awakens human love. " We love God because he first loved
us." What, then, is it that I love in God ? Love : love to
man. But when I love and worship the love with which God
loves man, do I not love man ; is not my love of God, though

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 57

indirectly, love of man ? Tf God loves man, is not man, then,
the very substance of God ? That which I love is it not
my inmost being ? Have I a heart when I do not love ?
No ! love only is the heart of man. But w T hat is love without
the thing loved ? Thus what I love is my heart, the substance
of my being, my nature. Why does man grieve why does
he lose pleasure in life, when he has lost the beloved
object ? Why ? because with the beloved object he has lost
his heart, the activity of his affections, the principle of life.
Thus, if God loves man, man is the heart of God the welfare
of man his deepest anxiety. If man, then, is the object of
God, is not man, in God, an object to himself? is not the con
tent of the divine nature the human nature ? If God is love,
is not the essential content of this love, man ? Is not the love
of God to man the basis and central point of religion the
love of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the
highest objective truth, as the highest Being to man ? Is not
then the proposition, "God loves man" an orientalism (religion
is essentially oriental), which in plain speech means, the highest
is the love of man ?

The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here
reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also been recognised
even in the religious consciousness. Thus Luther, for example,
says, " He who can truly conceive such a thing (namely, the
incarnation of God) in his heart, should, for the sake of the
flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of God, bear love
to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never more be
able to be angry with any man. The gentle manhood of
Christ our God, should at a glance fill all hearts with joy, so
that never more could an angry, unfriendly thought come
therein yea, every man ought, out of great joy, to be tender
to his fellow-man, for the sake of that our flesh and blood."
" This is a fact which should move us to great joy and blissful
hope, that we are thus honoured above all creatures, even above
the angels, so that we can with truth boast, my own flesh and
blood sits at the right hand of God, and reigns over all. Such
honour has no creature, not even an angel. This ought to
be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should
create such a fervour in us men that we should heartily love
each other." But that which in the truth of religion is the
essence of the fable, the chief thing, is to the religious con*
sciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.

D 3

58 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE SUFFEKING GOD.

AN essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is the same
thing, the human God, namely, Christ, is the Passion. Love
attests itself hy suffering. All thoughts and feelings which
are immediately associated with Christ, concentrate themselves
in the idea of the Passion. God as God is the sum of all
human perfection ; God as Christ is the sum of all human
misery. The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, especially
the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as the highest, the
divine ; the Christians consecrated passivity, even placing
it in God. If God as actus purus, as pure activity, is the
God of abstract philosophy; so, on the other hand, Christ,
the God of the Christians, is the passio pura, pure suffering
the highest metaphysical thought, the etre supreme, of the heart.
For what makes more impression on the heart than suffering ?
especially the suffering of one who considered in himself is
free from suffering, exalted above it ; the suffering of the in
nocent, endured purely for the good of others, the suffering of
love, self-sacrifice ? But for the very reason that the history
of the Passion is the history which most deeply affects the
human heart, or let us rather say the heart, in general for it
would be a ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to conceive any
other heart than the human, it follows undeniably that
nothing else is expressed in that history, nothing else is made
an object in it, but the nature of the heart, that it is not an
invention of the understanding or the poetic faculty, but of the
heart. The heart, however, does not invent in the same way
as the free imagination or intelligence ; it has a passive, recep
tive relation to what it produces ; all that proceeds from it
seems to it given from without, takes it by violence, works
with the force of irresistible necessity. The heart overcomes,
masters man ; he who is once in its power is possessed as it
were by his demon, by his God. The heart knows no other

THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 59

God, no more excellent being than itself, than a God whose
name may indeed be another, but whose nature, whose sub
stance, is the nature of the heart. And out of the heart, out
of the inward impulse to do good, to live and die for man, out
of the divine instinct of benevolence which desires* to make all
happy, and excludes none, not even the most abandoned and
abject, out of the moral duty of benevolence in the highest
sense, as having become an inward necessity, i.e., a movement
of the heart, out of the human nature, therefore, as it reveals
itself through the heart, has sprung what is best, what is true
in Christianity its essence purified from theological dogmas
and contradictions.

For, according to the principles which we have already
developed, that which in religion is the predicate, we must
make the subject, and that which in religion is a subject we
must make a predicate, thus inverting the oracles of religion ;
and by this means we arrive at the truth. God suffers
suffering is the predicate but for men, for others, not for
himself. What does that mean in plain speech ? nothing else
than this: to suffer for others is divine; he who suffers for
others, who lays down his life for them, acts divinely, is a God
to men.*

The passion of Christ, however, represents not only moral,
voluntary suffering, the suffering of love, the power of sacrificing
self for the good of others ; it represents also suffering as such,
suffering in so far as it is an expression of passibility in
general. The Christian religion is so little superhuman, that
it even sanctions human weakness. The heathen philosopher,
on hearing tidings of the death of his child, exclaims : " I
knew that he was mortal." Christ, on the contrary, at least
in the Bible, sheds tears over the death of Lazarus, a death
which he nevertheless knew to be only an apparent one. While
Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul, Christ

* Eeligion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What
Christ did, is law. Christ suffered for others ; therefore, we should do
likewise. " Quse necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic
abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis ; nisi ut vos similiterfaciatis?" Bernardus
(in Die nat. Domini). " We ought studiously to consider the example of

Christ That would move us and incite us, so that we from our

hearts should willingly help and serve other people, even though it might
be hard, and we must suffer on account of it." Luther (T. xv. p. 40).

60 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

exclaims : " If it be possible, let tbis cup pass from me."*
Christ is in tbis respect the self- confession of human sensibility.
In opposition to the heathen, and in particular the stoical
principle, with its rigorous energy of will and self-sustainedness,
the Christiaii involves the consciousness of his own sensitive
ness and susceptibility in the consciousness of God; he finds
it, if only it be no sinful weakness, not denied, not condemned
in God.

To suffer is the highest command of Christianity the
history of Christianity is the history of the Passion of
Humanity. While amongst the heathens the shout of sensual
pleasure mingled itself in the worship of the gods, amongst
the Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians,
God is served with sighs and tears.f But as where sounds
of sensual pleasure make a part of the cultus, it is a sensual
God, a God of life, who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts
of joy are only a symbolical definition of the nature of the
gods to whom this jubilation is acceptable; so also the sighs
of Christians are tones which proceed from the inmost soul,
the inmost nature of their God. The God expressed by the
cultus, whether this be an external, or, as with the Christians,
an inward spiritual worship, not the God of sophistical
theology, is the true God of man. But the Christians, we
mean of course the ancient Christians, believed that they
rendered the highest honour to their God by tears, the tears of
repentance and yearning. Thus tears are the light-reflecting
drops which mirror the nature of the Christian's God. But a
God who has pleasure in tears, expresses nothing else than
the nature of the heart. It is true that the theory of the
Christian religion says : Christ has done all for us, has redeemed
us, has reconciled us with God; and from hence the inference
may be drawn: Let us be of a joyful mind and disposition;
what need have we to trouble ourselves as to how we shall
reconcile ourselves with God ? we are reconciled already. But
the imperfect tense in which the fact of suffering is expressed,

* " Haevent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum non
puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque demiror.
Minus enim contulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset affectum. Ergo pro
me doluit, qui pro se iiihil habu.it, quod doleret." Ambrosius (Exposit. in
Lucas Ev. 1. x. c. 22).

t " Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua impassi-
bilitate mauenti ?" Bernardus (Tract, de xii. Grad. Humil. et Superb.).

THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 61

makes a deeper, a more enduring impression, than the perfect
tense which expresses the fact of redemption. The redemption
is only the result of the suffering ; the suffering is the cause
of the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper root in
the feelings ; the suffering makes itself an object of imitation ;
not so the redemption. If God himself suffered for my sake,
how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself any gladness, at
least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffer
ing ?* Ought I to fare better than God ? Ought I not,
then, to make his sufferings my own ? Is not what God my
Lord does, my model ? Or shall I share only the gain, and
not the cost also ? Do I know merely that he has redeemed
me ? Do I not also know the history of his suffering ?
Should it be an object of cold remembrance to me, or even an
object of rejoicing, because it has purchased my salvation ?
Who can think so who can wish to be exempt from the
sufferings of his God ?

The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.f The
images of the crucified one which we still meet with in all
churches, represent not the Saviour, but only the crucified, the
suffering Christ. Even the self- crucifixions among the Chris
tians are, psychologically, a deep-rooted consequence of their
religious views. How should not he who has always the image
of the crucified one in his mind, at length contract the desire
to crucify either himself or another ? At least w r e have as
good a warrant for this conclusion as Augustine and other
fathers of the church for their reproach against the heathen
religion, that the licentious religious images of the heathens
provoked and authorized licentiousness.

God suffers, means in truth nothing else than : God is a
heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all suffering.
A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The
mystery of the suffering God is therefore the mystery of
feeling, sensibility. A suffering God is a feeling, sensitive
God.J But the proposition : God is a feeling Being, is only

* " Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo ?" (Form.
Hon. Vitse. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) " Memoriacrucifixi
crucifigat in te carnem tuam/' Joh. Gerhard (Medit. sacrse, M. 37).

f " It is better to suffer evil, than to do good." Luther (T. iv. s. 15).

J " Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret."
Bernhard (de Grad.). " Miserere iiostri, quoniam camis imbecillitatem, tu ipse
earn passus, expertus es." Clemens Alex. Psedag. 1. i. c. 8.

62 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the religious periphrase of the proposition : feeling is absolute,
divine in its nature.

Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of activity,
but also of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel ; and I
feel feeling (not merely will and thought, which are only too
often in opposition to me and my feelings), as belonging to
my essential being, and, though the source of all suffer
ings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and perfection.
What would man be without feeling ? It is the musical
power in man. But what would man be without music ?
Just as man has a musical faculty and feels an inward necessity
to breathe out his feelings in song ; so, by a like necessity, he
in religious sighs and tears, streams forth the nature of
feeling as an objective, divine nature.

Religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself. That
which exists has necessarily a pleasure, a joy in itself, loves
itself, and loves itself justly ; to blame it because it loves itself
is to reproach it because it exists. To exist is to assert one
self, to affirm oneself, to love oneself; he to whom life is a
burthen, rids himself of it. Where, therefore, feeling is not
depreciated and repressed, as with the Stoics, where existence
is awarded to it, there also is religious power and significance
already conceded to it, there also is it already exalted to that
stage in which it can mirror and reflect itself, in which it can
project its own image as God. God is the mirror of man.

That which has essential value for man, which he esteems
the perfect, the excellent, in which he has true delight, that
alone is God to him. If feeling seems to thee a glorious
attribute, it is then, per se, a divine attribute to thee. There
fore, the feeling, sensitive man believes only in a feeling, sensi
tive God, i.e., he believes only in the truth of his own existence
and nature, for he can believe in nothing else than that which
is involved in his own nature. His faith is the consciousness
of that which is holy to him ; but that alone is holy to man
which lies deepest within him, which is most peculiarly his
own, the basis, the essence of his individuality. To the
feeling man a God without feeling is an empty, abstract,
negative God, i.e., nothing ; because that is wanting to him
which is precious and sacred to man. God is for man the
common-place book where he registers his highest feelings and
thoughts, the genealogical tree on which are entered the
names that are dearest and most sacred to him.

THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 63

It is a sign of an undiscriminating good-nature, a womanish
instinct, to gather together and then to preserve tenaciously all
that we have gathered, not to trust anything to the waves of
forgetfulness, to the chance of memory, in short not to trust
ourselves and learn to know what really has value for us. The
freethinker is liahle to the danger of an unregulated, dissolute
life. The religious man, who binds together all things in one,
does not lose himself in sensuality ; but for that reason he is
exposed to the danger of illiberality, of spiritual selfishness
and greed. Therefore, to the religious man at least, the irre
ligious or un-religious man appears lawless, arbitrary, haughty,
frivolous ; not because that which is sacred to the former is
not also in itself sacred to the latter, but only because that
which the un-religious man holds in his head merely, the reli
gious man places out of and above himself as an object, and
hence recognises in himself the relation of a formal subordi
nation. The religious man, having a common-place book,
a nucleus of aggregation, has an aim, and having an aim
he has firm standing-ground. Not mere will as such, not
vague knowledge only activity with a purpose, which is the
union of theoretic and practical activity, gives man a moral
basis and support, i.e., character. Every man, therefore, must
place before himself a God, i.e., an aim, a purpose. The aim
is the conscious, voluntary, essential impulse of life, the glance
of genius, the focus of self-knowledge, the unity of the
material and spiritual in the individual man. He who has
an aim, has a law over him ; he does not merely guide himself;
he is guided. He who has no aim, has no home, no sanctuary ;
aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. Even he who has
only common aims, gets on better, though he may not be better,
than he who has no aim. An aim sets limits ; but limits are
the mentors of virtue. He who has an aim, an aim which is
in itself true and essential, has, eo ipso, a religion, if not in
the narrow sense of common pietism, yet and this is the
only point to be considered in the sense of reason, in the
sense of the universal, the only true love.

64- THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER
OF GOD.

IF a God without feeling, without a capability of suffering, will
not suffice to man as a feeling, suffering being, neither will a
God with feeling only, a God without intelligence and will.
Only a being who comprises in himself the whole man can
satisfy the whole man. Man's consciousness of himself in his
totality is the consciousness of the Trinity. The Trinity knits
together the qualities or powers, which were before regarded
separately, into unity, and thereby reduces the universal
being of the understanding, i. e., God as God, to a special
being, a special faculty.

That which theology designates as the image, the simi
litude of the Trinity, we must take as the thing itself, the
essence, the archetype, the original; by this means we shall
solve the enigma. The so-called images by which it has been
sought to illustrate the Trinity, and make it comprehensible,
are, principally: mind, understanding, memory, will, love
mens, intellectus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas.

God thinks, God loves; and, moreover, he thinks, he loves
himself; the object thought, known, loved, is God himself.
The objectivity of self- consciousness is the first thing we
meet with in the Trinity. Self-consciousness necessarily urges
itself upon man as something absolute. Existence is for him
one with self-consciousness; existence with self-consciousness
is for him existence simply. If I do not know that I exist,
it is all one whether I exist or not. Self-consciousness is for
man is, in fact, in itself absolute. A God who knows not
his own existence, a God without consciousness, is no God.
Man cannot conceive himself as without consciousness ; hence
he cannot conceive God as without it. The divine self-con-

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 65

sciousness is nothing else than the consciousness of con
sciousness as an absolute or divine essence.

But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. On the
contrary, we should be proceeding very arbitrarily if we sought
to reduce and limit the mystery of the Trinity to the proposi
tion just laid down. Consciousness, understanding, will, love,
in the sense of abstract essences or qualities, belong only to
abstract philosophy. But religion is man's consciousness of
himself in his concrete or living totality, in which the identity
of self-consciousness exists only as the pregnant, complete
unity of I and thou.

Religion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the
world ; it is essentially inward. The religious man leads a life
withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, still, void of worldly
joy. He separates himself from the world, not only in the
ordinary sense, according to which the renunciation of the
world belongs to every true, earnest man, but also in that
wider sense which science gives to the word, when it calls
itself world-wisdom (welt-weisheit) ; but he thus separates
himself, only because God is a Being separate from the world,
an extra and supramundane Being, i. e., abstractly and
philosophically expressed, the non-existence of the world.
God as an extramundane being, is however nothing else
than the nature of man, withdrawn from the world and
concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties and entangle
ments, transporting itself above the world, and positing itself
in this condition as a real objective being; or, nothing else
than the consciousness of the power to abstract oneself from
all that is external; and to live for and with oneself alone,
under the form which this power takes in religion, namely,
that of a being distinct, apart from man.* God as God, as
a simple being, is the being absolutely alone, solitary absolute

* " Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab seterno fuit Deus in se
ipso ; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas," John Gerhard
(Medit. sacrae, M. 31). " If thou wouldst have the Creator, thou must do
without the creature. The less of the creature, the more of God. There
fore, abjure all creatures, with all their consolations." J. Tauler (Postilla.
Hamburg, 1621. p. 312). " If a man cannot say in his heart with truth :
God and I are alone in the world there is nothing else, he has no peace
in himself." G. Arnold (Von Verschmahung der Welt. Wahre Abbild
der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, 7).

66 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

solitude and self-sufficingness; for that only can be solitary
which is self- sufficing. To be able to be solitary is a sign
of character and thinking power. Solitude is the want of the
thinker, society the want of the heart. We can think alone,
but we can love only with another. In love we are dependent,
for it is the need of another being; we are independent only
in the solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficing-
ness.

But from a solitary God the essential need, of duality, of
love, of community, of the real, completed self -consciousness,
of the alter ego, is excluded. This want is therefore satisfied
by religion thus: in the still solitude of the divine being is
placed another, a second, different from God as to personality,
but identical with him in essence, God the Son, in distinc
tion from God the Father. God the Father is I, God the Son
Thou. The / is understanding, the Thou love. But Love
with understanding and understanding with love, is mind, and
mind is the totality of man as such the total man.

Participated life is alone true, self- satisfying, divine life :
this simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in man, is the
secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. But religion
expresses this truth, as it does every other, in an indirect man
ner, i. e., inversely, for it here makes a general truth into a
particular one, the true subject into a predicate, when it says:
God is a participated life, a life of love and friendship. The
third person in the Trinity expresses nothing further than the
love of the two divine Persons towards each other ; it is the
unity of the Son and the Father, the idea of community,
strangely enough regarded in its turn as* a special personal
being.

The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a name,
a word. The earliest Fathers of the Church are well known to
have identified the Spirit with the Son. Even later, its dog
matic personality wants consistency. He is the love with which
God loves himself and man, and on the other hand, he is the
love with which man loves God and men. Thus he is the
identity of God and man, made objective according to the usual
mode of thought in religion, namely, as in itself a distinct being.
But for us this unity or identity is already involved in the idea
of the Father, and yet more in that of the Son. Hence we need
not make the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis.
Only this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit
represents the subjective phase, he is properly the representa-

THE MYSTERY OF THE TKINITY. 67

tion of the religious sentiment to itself, the representation
of religious emotion, of religious enthusiasm, or the personifi
cation, the rendering objective of religion in religion. The
Holy Spirit is therefore the sighing creature, the yearning of
the creature after God.

But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity,
the third representing, as has heen said, only love, is involved
in this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice. With two
we have the principle of multiplicity and all its essential results.
Two is the principle of multiplicity, and can therefore stand as
its complete substitute. If several Persons were posited, the
force of love would only be weakened it would be dispersed.
But love and the heart are identical; the heart is no special
power ; it is the man who loves, and in so far as he loves. The
second Person is therefore the self-assertion of the human heart
as the principle of duality, of participated life, it is warmth ;
the Father is light, although light was chiefly a predicate of the
Son, because in him the Godhead first became clear, compre
hensible. But notwithstanding this, light as a super- terrestrial
element may be ascribed to the Father, the representative of the
Godhead as such, the cold being of the intelligence; and
warmth, as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God as the Son
first gives warmth to man ; here God, from an object of the
intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, becomes an
object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, of rapture ; but
only because the Son is himself nothing else than the glow of
love, enthusiasm.* God as the Son- is the primitive incarna
tion, the primitive self-renunciation of God, the negation of
God in God ; for as the Son he is a finite being, because he exists
a b alio, he has a source, whereas the Father has no source, he
exists a se. Thus in the second Person the essential attribute
of the Godhead, the attribute of self- existence, is given up.
But God the . Father himself begets the Son ; thus he re
nounces his rigorous, exclusive divinity ; he humiliates, lowers
himself, evolves within himself the principle of finiteness, of
dependent existence ; in the Son he becomes man, not
indeed, in the first instance, as to the outward form, but as to
the inward nature. And for this reasou. it is as the Son

* " Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus
amari. Quid in his praestat, quid eminet? Amor." Bernardus (Sup.
Cant. Serm. 83).

68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

that God first becomes the object of man, the object of feeling,
of the heart.

The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart.
From the character of the subjective disposition and impres
sions the conclusion is infallible as to the character of the
object. The pure, free understanding denies the Son, not so
the understanding determined by feeling, overshadowed by the
heart ; on the contrary, it finds in the Son the depths of the
Godhead, because in him it finds feeling, which in and by itself
is something dark, obscure, and therefore appears to man a
mystery. The Son lays hold on the heart, because the true
Father of the divine Son is the human heart,* and the Son
himself nothing else than the divine heart, i. e., the human
heart become objective to itself as a divine Being.

A God, who has not in himself the quality of finiteness, the
principle of concrete existence, the essence of the feeling of
dependence, is no God for a finite, concrete being. The reli
gious man cannot love a God who has not the essence of love
in himself, neither can man, or, in general, any finite being be
an object to a God who has not in himself the ground, the
-principle of finiteness. To such a God there is wanting the
sense, the understanding, the sympathy for finiteness. How
can God be the Father of men, how can he love other beings
subordinate to himself, if he has not in himself a subordinate
being, a Son, if he does not know what love is, so to speak,
from his own experience, in relation to himself ? The single
man takes far less interest in the family sorrows of another than
he who himself has family ties. Thus God the Father loves
men only in the Son and for the sake of the Son. The love to
man is derived from the love to the Son.

The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father and
son not in a figurative sense, but in a strictly literal sense.
The Father is a real father in relation to the Son, the Son is
a real son in relation to the Father, or to God as the Father.
The essential personal distinction between them consists only
in this, that the one begets, the other is begotten. If this na
tural empirical condition is taken away, their personal exist
ence and reality are annihilated. The Christians we mean

* Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism in distinction from Pro
testantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit
is the mother of God.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 69

of course the Christians of former days, who would with diffi
culty recognise the worldly, frivolous, pagan Christians of the
modern world as their brethren in Christ substituted for
the natural love and unity immanent in man, a purely
religious love and unity; they rejected the real life of
the family, the intimate bond of love which is naturally moral,
as an undivine, unheavenly, i. e., in truth, a worthless thing. But
in compensation they had a Father and Son in God, who em
braced each other with heartfelt love, with thati ntense love
which natural relationship alone inspires. On this account the
mystery of the Trinity was to the ancient Christians an object of
unbounded wonder, enthusiasm and rapture, because here the
satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which in reality,
in life, they denied, became to them an object of contemplation
in God.*

It was therefore quite in order, that to complete the divine
family, the bond of love between Father and Son, a third, and
that a feminine person, was received into heaven ; for the
personality of the Holy Spirit is a too vague and precarious
a too obviously poetic personification of the mutual love of
the Father and Son, to serve as the third complementary being^
It is true that the Virgin Mary was not so placed between the
Father and Son as to imply that the Father had begotten the
Son through her, because the sexual relation was regarded by
the Christians as something unholy and sinful; but it is
enough that the maternal principle was associated with the
Father and Son.

It is in fact difficult to perceive why the Mother should be
something unholy, i. e., unworthy of God, when once God is
Father and Son. Though it is held that the Father is not a
Father in the natural sense that, on the contrary, the Divine
generation is quite different from the natural and human still
he remains a Father, and a real, not a nominal or symbolical
Father, in relation to the Son. And the idea of the Mother of
God, which now appears so strange to us, is therefore not
really more strange or paradoxical, than the idea of the Son of
God, is not more in contradiction with the general, abstract
definition of God than the Sonship. On the contrary, the

* " Dum Patris et Filii proprietates communionemque delectabilem iiitueor,
nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris affectum." An-
selmus (in Eisner's Gesch. d. Phil. II. B. Anh. p. 18).

70 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Virgin Mary fits in perfectly with the relations of the Trinity,
since she conceives without man the Son whom the Father
begets without woman ;* so that thus the Holy Virgin is a
necessary, inherently requisite antithesis to the Father in the
bosom of the Trinity. Moreover we have, if not in concrete)
and explicitly, yet in abstracto and implicitly, the feminine
principle already in the Son. The Son is the mild, gentle,
forgiving, conciliating being the womanly sentiment of God.
God, as the Father, is the generator, the active, the principle
of masculine spontaneity ; but the Son is begotten, without
himself begetting, Deus genitus, the passive, suffering, receptive
being ; he receives his existence from the Father. The Son,
as a Son, of course not as God, is dependent on the Father,
subject to his authority. The Son is thus the feminine feeling
of dependence in the Godhead ; the Son implicitly urges upon
us the need of a real feminine being.f

The son I mean the natural, human son considered as
such, is an intermediate being between the masculine nature of
the father and the feminine nature of the mother ; he is, as it
were, still half a man, half a woman, inasmuch as he has not the
full, rigorous consciousness of independence which characterizes
the man, and feels himself drawn rather to the mother than to
the father. The love of the son to the mother is the first
love of the masculine being for the feminine. The love of
man to woman, the love of the youth for the maiden, receives
its religious its sole truly religious consecration in the love
of the son to the mother ; the son's love for his mother is
the first yearning of man towards woman his first humbling
of himself before her.

Necessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of God is
associated with the idea of the Son of God, the same
heart that needed the one needed the other also. Where
the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent ; the Son is

* " Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel ; de Patre sine sexu, de matre
sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus ; apud matrem
defuit seminantis amplexus." Augustinus (Serm. ad. Pop. p. 372, c. 1, Ed.
Bened. Antw. 1701).

f In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a masculine,
the Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose intermixture arose the
Son, and with him the world. Gfrorer, Jahrb., d. H. i. Abth. p. 332-34.
The Herrnhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 71

the only begotten of the Father, but the Mother is the con
comitant of the Son. The Son is a substitute for the Mother
to the Father, but not so the Father to the Son. To the Son
the Mother is indispensable ; the heart of the Son is the heart
of the Mother. Why did God become man only through
woman ? Could not the Almighty have appeared as a man
amongst men in another manner immediately ? Why did
the Son betake himself to the bosom of the Mother ?* For
what other reason, than because the Son is the yearning after
the Mother, because his womanly, tender heart, found a
corresponding expression only in a feminine body ? It is true
that the Son, as a natural man, dwells only temporarily in the
shrine of this body, but the impressions which he here receives
are inextinguishable ; the Mother is never out of the mind and
heart of the son. If then the worship of the Son of God is
no idolatry, the worship of the Mother of God is no idolatry.
If herein we perceive the love of God to us, that he gave us his
only begotten Son, i.e., that which was dearest to him, for our
salvation, we can perceive this love still better when we find
in God the beating of a mother's heart. The highest and
deepest love is the mother's love. The father consoles himself
for the loss of his son ; he has a stoical principle within him.
The mother, on the contrary, is inconsolable ; she is the
sorrowing element, that which cannot be indemnified the true
in love.

Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also sinks
faith in the Son of God, and in God as the Father. The
Father is a truth only where the Mother is a truth. Love is in
and by itself essentially feminine in its nature. The belief in
the love of God is the belief in the feminine principle as
divine.* Love apart from living nature is an anomaly, a
phantom. Behold in love the holy necessity and depth of
Nature !

Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God ; but this
deposition of woman has been severely avenged.f The arms

* " For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to bring his
Son into the world without a mother; but it was His will to use the
woman for that end." Luther (T. ii. p. 348). ^

f In the Concordienbuch, Erklar. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of the Augsburg
Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the " Blessed Virgin, who

72 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

which it has used against the Mother of God have turned
against itself, against the Son of God, against the whole
Trinity. He who has once offered up the Mother of God to
the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the mystery of
the Son of God as an anthropomorphism. The anthropomor
phism is certainly veiled when the feminine "being is excluded,
but only veiled not removed. It is true that Protestantism
had no need of the heavenly bride, because it received with
open arms the earthly bride. But for that very reason it
ought to have been consequent and courageous enough to give
up not only the Mother, but the Son and the Father. Only
he who has no earthly parents needs heavenly ones. The
triune God is the God of Catholicism; he has a profound,
heartfelt, necessary, truly religious significance, only in anti
thesis to the negation of all substantial bonds, in antithesis to
the life of the anchorite, the monk, and the nun.* The triune
God has a substantial meaning only where there is an abstrac
tion from the substance of real life. The more empty life is,
the fuller, the more concrete is God. The impoverishing of
the real world, and the enriching of God, is one act. Only the
poor man has a rich God,, God springs out of the feeling of a
want; what man is in need of, whether this be a definite and
therefore conscious, or an unconscious need, that is God.
Thus the disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed
a God in whom there is society, a union of beings fervently
loving each other.

Here we have the true explanation of the fact, that the
Trinity has in modern times lost first its practical, and ulti
mately its theoretical significance.

was truly the mother of God, and yet remained a virgin," "worthy of all
honour."

* "Sit monachus quasi Melchisedec sine patre, sine matre, sine genealogia:
neque patrem sibi vocet super terram. Imo sic existimet, quasi ipse sit

solus et Deus. (Specul. Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec

refeitur ad exemplum, ut tanquam sine patre et sine matre sacerdos esse
debeat. ' ' Ambrosius .

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 73

CHAPTER VII.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.

THE essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concen
trated in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest
of Christians in the Trinity has heen, in the main, only an
interest in the Son of God.* The fierce contention concerning
the Homousios and Homoiousios was not an empty one,
although it turned upon a letter. The point in question was
the co -equality and divine dignity of the second Person, and
therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself; for its
essential, characteristic ohject is the second Person; and that
which is essentially the ohject of a religion is truly, essentially
its God. The real God of any religion is the so-called Medi
ator, because he alone is the immediate ohject of religion. He
who, instead of applying to God, applies to a saint, does so only
on the assumption that the saint has all power with God,
that what he prays for, i.e., wishes and wills, God readily per
forms ; that thus God is entirely in the hands of the saint.
Supplication is the means, under the guise of humility and
submission, of exercising one's power and superiority over
another being. That to which my mind first turns, is also in
truth the first being to me. I turn to the saint, not because
the saint is dependent on God, but because God is dependent
on the saint, because God is determined and ruled by the
prayers, i. e., by the wish or heart of the saint. The distinc
tions which the Catholic theologians made between latreia,
doulia, and hyperdoulia, are absurd, groundless sophisms.
The God in the background of the Mediator is only an
abstract, inert conception, the conception or idea of the God
head in general ; and it is not to reconcile us with this idea,

* " Negas ergo Deum, si non omnia filio, quaB Dei sunt, deferentur." Am-
brosius de Fide ad Gratianum, 1. iii. c. 7. On the same ground the Latin
Church adhered so tenaciously to the dogma that the Holy Spirit proceeded
not from the Father alone, as the Greek Church maintained, but from the
Son also. See on this subject J. G. Walchii, Hist. Contr. Gr. et Lat. de
Proc. Spir. S. Jenae, 1751.

E

74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

but to remove it to a distance, to negative it, because it is no
object for religion, that the Mediator interposes.* God above
the Mediator is nothing else than the cold understanding above
the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.

Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and
made happy only by images, by sensible representations. Mind
presenting itself as at once type-creating, emotional, and sen
suous, is the imagination. The second Person in God, who
is in truth the first person in religion, is the nature of the
imagination made objective. The definitions of the second
Person are principally images or symbols; and these images
do not proceed from man's incapability of conceiving the
object otherwise than symbolically, which is an altogether
false interpretation, but the thing cannot be conceived other
wise than symbolically because the thing itself is a symbol or
image. The Son is therefore expressly called the Image of
God ; his essence is that he is an image the representation of
God, the visible glory of the invisible God. The Son is the
satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature of the
imaginative activity in man made objective as an absolute,
divine activity. Man makes to himself an image of God, i. e. }
he converts the abstract Being of the reason, the Being of the
thinking power, into an object of sense, or imagination. f But
he places this image in God himself, because his want would
not be satisfied if he did not regard this image as an objective
reality, if it were nothing more for him than a subjective
image, separate from God, a mere figment devised by man.
And it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image ; for it
expresses the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of
affirming the imagination as a divine power. The Son is the
reflected splendour of the imagination, the image dearest to
the heart; but for the very reason that he is only an object

* This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God renounces,
denies his majesty, power, and infinity, in order to become a man; i.e.,
man denies the God who is not himself a man, and only affirms the God
who affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard, majestate et potentia,
non bonitate et misericordia. That which cannot be renounced, cannot be
denied, is thus the Divine goodness and mercy, i.e., the self-affirmation of
the human heart,

f It is obvious that the Image of God has also another signification,
namely, that the personal, visible man is God himself. But here the image
is considered simply as an image.

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 75

of the imagination, he is only the nature of the imagination
made objective.*

It is clear from this, how hlinded hy prejudice dogmatic
speculation is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis
of the Son of God as the Image of God, it demonstrates the
Son as a metaphysical ens, as an ohject of thought, whereas
the Son is a declension, a falling off from the metaphysical
idea of the Godhead ; a falling off, however, which religion
naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it, and
not to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate
principle of image worship, for he is the image of God; and
the image necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adora
tion of the saint in his image, is the adoration of the image as
the saint. Wherever the image is the essential expression,
the organ of religion, there also it is the essence of religion.

The Council of Nice adduced amongst other grounds for the
religious use of images, the authority of Gregory of Nyssa,
who said that he could never look at an image which repre
sented the sacrifice of Isaac without heing moved to tears,
because it so vividly brought before him that event in sacred
history. But the effect of the represented object is not the
effect of the object as such, but the effect of the representation.
The holy object is simply the haze of holiness in which the
image veils its mysterious power. The religious object is only
a pretext, by means of which art or imagination can exercise
its dominion over men unhindered. For the religious con
sciousness, it is true, the sacredness of the image is associated,
and necessarily so, only with the sacredness of the object; but
the religious consciousness is not the measure of truth. In
deed, the Church itself, while insisting on the distinction
between the image and the object of the image, and denying
that the worship is paid to the image, has at the same time
made at least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself
declaring the sacredness of the image. f

But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is the

* Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration, the
Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ.

f " Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et omnium Salvatoris
sequo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decernimus ....
Dignum est enim ut . , . . propter hoiiorem qui ad principia refertur,
etiam derivative imagines honorentur et adorentur." Gener. Const Cone,
viii. Art. 10. Can. 3.

E2

76 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

worship of the Image of God in God. The Son, who is the
" brightness of His glory, the express image of His person,"
is the entrancing splendour of the imagination, which only
manifests itself in visible images. Both to inward and out
ward contemplation the representation of Christ, the Image
of God, was the image of images. The images of the saints
are only optical multiplications of one and the same image.
The speculative deduction of the Image of God is therefore
nothing more than an unconscious deduction and establishing
of image-worship : for the sanction of the principle is also the
sanction of its necessary consequences ; the sanction of the
archetype is the sanction of its semblance. If God has an
image of himself, why should not I have an image of God ?
If God loves his Image as himself, why should not I also love
the Image of God as I love God himself? If the Image of
God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint
be the saint himself? If it is no superstition to believe that
the image which God makes of himself, is no image, no mere
conception, but a substance, a person, why should it be a
superstition to believe that the image of the saint is the sensi
tive substance of the saint ? The Image of God weeps and
bleeds ; why then should not the image of a saint also weep
and bleed ? Does the distinction lie in the fact that the image
of the saint is a product of the hands ? Why, the hands
did not make this image, but the mind which animated the
hands, the imagination ; and if God makes an image of himself,
that also is only a product of the imagination. Or does the
distinction proceed from this, that the Image of God is produced
by God himself, whereas the image of the saint is made by
another ? Why, the image of the saint is also a product of
the saint himself : for he appears to the artist ; the artist only
represents him as he appears.

Connected with the nature of the image is another definition
of the Second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.

A Word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so
far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power,
it is the imagined thought : hence, men when they know the
word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing
also. Words are a result of the imagination. Sleepers who
dream vividly, and invalids who are delirious, speak. The
power of speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak
Because they have no poetic faculty. Thought expresses itself
only by images; the power by which thought expresses itself

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 77

is the imagination ; the imagination expressing itself is speech.
He who speaks, lays under a spell, fascinates those to whom
he speaks ; hut the power of words is the power of the imagi
nation. Therefore to the ancients, as children of the imagina
tion, the Word was a heing a mysterious, magically powerful
heing. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar among
them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, attached
to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of healing.* And
in the present day the common people still helieve that it is
possible to bewitch men by mere words. Whence comes this
ascription of imaginary influences to words ? Simply from
this, that words themselves are only a result of the imagination,
and hence have the effect of a narcotic on man, imprison him
under the power of the imagination. Words possess a revolution
izing force ; words govern mankind. Words are held sacred ;
while the things of reason and truth are decried.

The affirming or making objective of the nature of the
imagination is therefore directly connected with the affirming or
making objective of the nature of speech, of the Word. Man
has not only an instinct, an internal necessity, which impels
him to think, to perceive, to imagine; he has also the impulse
to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A divine impulse this
a divine power, the power of words. The word is the imaged,
revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening thought. The word
is the light of the world. The word guides to all truth, un
folds all mysteries, reveals the unseen, makes present the past
and the future, defines the infinite, perpetuates the transient.
Men pass away, the word remains ; the word is life and truth.
All power is given to the word : the word makes the blind
see and the lame walk, heals the sick, and brings the dead to
life; the word works miracles, and the only rational miracles.
The word is the gospel, the paraclete of mankind. To con
vince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine thyself
alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and imagine
thyself further hearing for the first time the word of a human
being : would not this word seem to thee angelic, would it not
sound like the voice of God himself, like heavenly music ?
Words are not really less rich, less pregnant than music, though
music seems to say more, and appears deeper and richer than
words, for this reason simply, that it is invested with that
prepossession, that illusion.

* " Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dsemones,ut nonnunquam etiam
a malis nominatum sit efficax." Origenes adv. Celsuni, 1. i. ; see also 1. iii.

78 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The Word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to
make free. The sins which we confess are forgiven us by
virtue of the divine power of the word. The dying man who
gives forth in speech his long-concealed sins, departs recon
ciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession of sins.
The sorrows which we confide to our friend are already half
healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the passions which
it has excited in us are allayed ; we see more clearly ; the
object of anger, of vexation, of sorrow, appears to us in a
light in which we perceive the unworthiness of those passions.
If we are in darkness and doubt on any matter, we need only
speak of it ; often in the very moment in which we open our
lips to consult a friend, the doubts and difficulties disappear.
The word makes man free. He who cannot express himself is
a slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, excessive
grief, are speechless. To speak is an act of freedom ; the word
is freedom. Justly therefore is language held to be the root
of culture ; where language is cultivated, man is cultivated.
The barbarism of the middle ages disappeared before the re
vival of language.

As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than the
Rational which we think, the Good which we love, the Beau
tiful which we perceive ; so we know no higher spiritually
operative power and expression of power, than the power of the
Word.* God is the sum of all reality. All that man feels or
knows as a reality, he must place in God or regard as God.
Religion must therefore be conscious of the power of the
word as a divine power. The Word of God is the divinity of
the word, as it becomes an object to man within the sphere of
religion, the true nature of the human word. The Word of
God is supposed to be distinguished from the human word in
that it is no transient breath, but an imparted being. But
does not the word of man also contain the being of man, his
imparted self, at least when it is a true word ? Thus religion
takes the appearance of the human word for its essence ; hence
it necessarily conceives the true nature of the Word to be a
special being, distinct from the human word.

" God reveals himself to us, as the Speaker, who has, in himself, an
eternal uncreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things, with
slight labour, namely with speech, so that to God it is not more difficult
to create than it is to^us to name." Luther, t. i. p. 302.

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 79

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE
IN GOD.

THE second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring
himself (Deus se elicit), is the world-creating principle in God.
But this means nothing else than that the second Person is inter
mediate between the noumenal nature of God and the phenomenal
nature of the world, that he is the divine principle of the finite,
of that which is distinguished from God. The second Person
as begotten, as not a se, not existing of himself, has the funda
mental condition of the finite in himself."* But at the same
time, he is not yet a real finite Being, posited out of God ; on
the contrary, he is still identical with God, as identical as
the son is with the father, the son being indeed another person,
but still of like nature with the father. The second Person,
therefore, does not represent to us the pure idea of the God
head, but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity,
or of reality in general : he is an intermediate Being between
the two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or invi
sible divine nature and the phenomenal or visible nature of the
world, is however nothing else than the opposition between
the nature of abstraction and the nature of perception ; but
that which connects abstraction with perception is the imagi
nation : consequently, the transition from God to the world by
means of the second Person, is only the form in which religion
makes objective the transition from abstraction to perception
by means of the imagination. It is the imagination alone by
which man neutralizes the opposition between God and
the world. All religious cosmogonies are products of the
imagination. Every being, intermediate between God and the
world, let it be defined how it may, is a being of the imagina-

* " Hylarius. . , . . Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat filium, quasi
duo sine principle et duo innascibilia, et duo innata dicens, duos fac-iat
Deos, anathema sit. Caput autem quod est principium Christi, Deus. . . .
Filium innascibilem confiteri impiissimum est." Petrus Lomb. Sent. 1. i.
disk 31. c. 4

80 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

tion. The psychological truth and necessity which lies at the
foundation of all these theogonies and cosmogonies, is the
truth and necessity of the imagination as a middle term between
the abstract and concrete. And the task of philosophy, in
investigating this subject, is to comprehend the relation of the
imagination to the reason, the genesis of the image by means
of which an object of thought becomes an object of sense, of
feeling.

But the nature of the imagination is the complete, exhaus
tive truth of the cosmogonic principle, only where the antithesis
of God and the world expresses nothing but the indefinite an
tithesis of the noumenal, invisible, incomprehensible Being,
God, and the visible, tangible existence of the world. If, on
the other hand, the cosmogonic being is conceived and ex
pressed abstractly, as is the case in religious speculation, we
have also to recognise a more abstract psychological truth as
its foundation.

The world is not God ; it is other than God, the opposite
of God, or at least that which is different from God. But
that which is different from God, cannot have come immedi
ately from God, but only from a distinction of God in God.
The second Person is God distinguishing himself from himself
in himself, setting himself opposite to himself, hence being an
object to himself. The self- distinguishing of God from himself
is the ground of that which is different from himself, and thus
self-consciousness is the origin of the world. God first thinks
the world in thinking himself: to think oneself is to beget
oneself, to think the world is to create the world. Begetting
precedes creating. The idea of the production of the world, of
another being who is not God, is attained through the idea of
the production of another being who is like God.

This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic
paraphrase of a psychological process, nothing else than the
unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, made objec
tive. God thinks himself: thus he is self-conscious. God is
self-consciousness posited as an object, as a being ; but
inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also thinks
another than himself; for to know oneself is to distinguish
oneself from another, whether this be a possible, merely con
cept] on al, or a real being. Thus the world at least the possi
bility, the idea of the world is posited with consciousness, or
rather conveyed in it. The Son, i.e., God thought by himself,

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMO GOXICAL PRINCIPLE. 81

objective to himself, the original reflection of God, the other
God, is the principle of Creation. The truth which lies at the
foundation of this is the nature of man : the identity of his
self-consciousness with his consciousness of another who is
identical with himself, and of another who is not identical with
himself. And the second, the other who is of like nature, is
necessarily the middle term between the first and third. The
idea of another in general, of one who is essentially different
from me arises to me first through the idea of one who is
essentially like me.

Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my limi
tation ; if I knew nothing of a world, I should know nothing
of limits : hut the consciousness of my limitation stands in
contradiction with the impulse of my egoism towards unli-
mitedness. Thus from egoism conceived as absolute (God is
the absolute Self) I cannot pass immediately to its opposite ;
I must introduce, prelude, moderate this contradiction by the
consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and in so far
gives me the perception of my limitation, but in such a way as
at the same time to affirm my own nature, make my nature
objective to me. The consciousness of the world is a humili
ating consciousness; the Creation was an "act of humility;"
but the first stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles,
is the thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in
the eye of a thou, before it endures the contemplation of a
being which does not reflect its own image. My fellow-man
is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel myself,
dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent
on other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the
world. I reconcile myself with the world only through my
fellow-man. Without other men, the world Avould be for me
not only dead and empty, but meaningless. Only through his
fellow does man become clear to himself and self-conscious;
but only when I am clear to myself, does the world become
clear to me. A man existing absolutely alone, would lose
himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of
Nature ; he would neither comprehend himself as man, nor
Nature as Nature. The first object of man is man. The sense
of Nature, which opens to us the consciousness of the world as
a world, is a later product ; for it first arises through the dis
tinction of man from himself. The natural philosophers of
Greece were preceded by the so-called seven Sages, whose
wisdom had immediate reference to human life only.

E 3

82 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world
through consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God
of man. That he is, he has to thank Nature ; that he is
man, he has to thank man ; spiritually as well as physically,
he can achieve nothing without his fellow-man. Four hands
can do more than two ; hut also, four eyes can see more than
two. And this combined power is distinguished not only in
quantity hut also in quality from that which is solitary. In
isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite.
The knowledge of a single man is limited, hut reason, science,
is unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind ; and it is so,
not only because innumerable men co-operate in the con
struction of science, hut also in the more profound sense, that
the scientific genius of a particular age comprehends in itself
the thinking powers of the preceding age, though it modifies
them in accordance with its own special character. Wit,
acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished from sensation,
reason as a subjective faculty, all these so-called powers of
the soul, are powers of humanity, not of man as an individual ;
they are products of culture, products of human society.
Only where man has contact and friction with his fellow-man are
wit and sagacity kindled ; hence there is more wit in the town
than in the country, more in great towns than in small ones.
Only where man suns and warms himself in the proximity of
man, arise feeling and imagination. Love, which requires
mutuality, is the spring of poetry; and only where man com
municates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes
reason. To ask a question and to answer, are the first acts
of thought. Thought originally demands two. It is not
until man has reached an advanced stage of culture that he
can double himself, so as to play the part of another within
himself. To think and to speak are therefore with all ancient
and sensuous nations, identical ; they think only in speaking ;
their thought is only conversation. The common people, i.e.,
people in whom the power of abstraction has not been
developed, are still incapable of understanding what is written
if they do not read it audibly, if they do not pronounce what
they read. In this point of view Hobbes correctly enough
derives the understanding of man from his ears !

Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle
in God expresses nothing further than the tautological pro
position : the different can only proceed from a principle of

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 83

difference, not from a simple being. However the Christian
philosophers and theologians insisted on the creation of the
world out of nothing, they were unahle altogether to evade
the old axiom " nothing comes from nothing," because it ex
presses a law of thought. It is true that they supposed no
real matter as the principle of the diversity of material things,
but they made the Divine understanding (and the Son is the
wisdom, the science, the understanding of the Father) as that
which comprehends within itself all things, as spiritual matter
the principle of real matter. The distinction between the
heathen eternity of matter and the Christian creation in this
respect, is only 'that the heathens ascribed to the world a real,
objective eternity, whereas the Christians gave it an invisible,
immaterial eternity. Things were, before they existed posi
tively, not, indeed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective
understanding. The Christians, whose principle is that of
absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only
through this principle. The matter posited by their subjective
thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to them
the first matter, far more excellent than real, objective
matter. Nevertheless, this distinction is only a distinction in
the mode of existence. The world is eternal in God. Or did it
spring up in him as a sudden idea, a caprice ? Certainly man
can conceive this too ; but, in doing so, he deifies nothing but
his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide by reason,
I can only derive the world from its essence, its idea, i.e., one
mode of its existence from another mode ; in other words, I
can derive the world only from itself. The world has its
basis in itself, as has everything in the world winch has a
claim to the name of species. The differentia specified, the
peculiar character, that by which a given being is what it is,
is always in the ordinary sense inexplicable, undeducible, is
through itself, has its cause in itself.

The distinction between the world and God as the creator
of the world, is therefore only a formal one. The nature of
God f or the divine understanding, that which comprehends
within itself all things, is the divine nature itself; hence God,
inasmuch as he thinks and knows himself, thinks and knows
at the same time the world and all things the nature of God
is nothing else than the abstract, thought nature of the world ;
the nature of the world nothing else than the real, concrete,
perceptible nature of God. Hence, creation is nothing more

84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

than a formal act ; for that which, before the creation, was
an object of thought, of the understanding, is by creation
simply made an object of sense, its ideal contents continuing
the same ; although it remains absolutely inexplicable how a
real material thing can spring out of a pure thought.*

So it is with plurality and difference if we reduce the
world to these abstract categories in opposition to the
unity and identity of the Divine nature. Real difference
can be derived only from a being which has a principle of
difference in itself. But I posit difference in the original
being, because I have originally found difference as a positive
reality. Wherever difference is in itself nothing, there also
no difference is conceived in the principle of things. I posit
difference as an essential category, as a truth, where I derive it
from the original being, and vice versa : the two propositions
are identical. The rational expression is this : Difference lies
as necessarily in the reason as identity.

But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I
cannot deduce it without presupposing it ; I cannot explain
it except by itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, self-
attesting reality. Through what means arises the world, that
which is distinguished from God ? through the distinguishing
of God from himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an
object to himself; he distinguishes himself from himself.
Hence this distinction, the world, arises only from a distinction
of another kind, the external distinction from an internal one,
the static distinction from a dynamic one, from an act of dis
tinction : thus I establish difference only through itself; i. e.,
it is an original concept, a ne plus ultra of my thought, a
law, a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that I can think,
is the distinction of a being from and in itself. The dis
tinction of one being from another is self-evident, is already
implied in their existence, is a palpable truth : they are two.
But I first establish difference for thought when I discern it
in one and the same being, when I unite it with the law of
identity. Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The
cosmogonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, is
nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest forms,
made objective. If I remove difference from God, he gives me

* It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a
Creation explains the existence of the world.

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 85

no material for thought ; he ceases to be an object of thought ;
for difference is an essential principle of thought. And if I
consequently place difference in God, what else do I establish,
what else do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of
this principle of thought ?

86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER IX.
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM OR OF NATURE IN GOD.

INTERESTING material for the criticism of cosmogonic and theo-
gonic fancies is furnished in the doctrine revived hy Schelling
and drawn from Jacob Bohme of eternal Nature in God.

God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral person
ality; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused,
dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But it
is self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from the
pure, darkness from light. How then can we remove these
obvious difficulties in the way of assigning a divine origin to
Nature ? Only by positing this impurity, this darkness in
God, by distinguishing in God himself a principle of light and
a principle of darkness. In other words, we can only explain
the origin of darkness by renouncing the idea of origin, and
presupposing darkness as existing from the beginning.*

But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the
material, Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence.
Hence the simple meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature,
Matter, cannot be explained as a result of intelligence ; on the
contrary, it is the basis of intelligence, the basis of personality,
without itself having any basis ; spirit without Nature is an
unreal abstraction; consciousness developes itself only out of
Nature. But this materialistic doctrine is veiled in a mystical
yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as it is not expressed in the
clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically enunciated
in that consecrated word of the emotions God. If the light
in God springs out of the darkness in God, this is only because
it is involved in the idea of light in general, that it illuminates

* It is beside our purpose to criticise this crass mystical theory. We
merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only when it is derived
from light ; that the derivation of the darkness in Nature from light appears
an impossibility only when it is not perceived that even in darkness there is
a residue of light, that the darkness in Nature is not an absolute, but a
modified darkness, tempered by light.

THE MYSTEEY OF MYSTICISM. 87

darkness, thus presupposing darkness, not making it. If then
God is once subjected to a general law, as he must necessarily
be unless he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless
notions, if self-consciousness in God as well as in itself, as in
general, is evolved from a principle in Nature, why is not this
natural principle abstracted from God ? That which is a law
of consciousness in itself, is a law for the consciousness of
every personal being, whether man, angel, demon, God, or
whatever else thou mayst conceive to thyself as a being. To
what then, seen in their true light, do the two principles in God
reduce themselves ? The one to Nature, at least to Nature as it
exists in the conception, abstracted from its reality ; the other
to rnind, consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse
side, thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, 011
which he presents to thee mind, consciousness : thus his specific
essence, that whereby he is God, is mind, intelligence, con
sciousness. Why then dost thou make that which is properly
the subject in God as God, i. e., as mind, into a mere predicate,
as if God existed as God apart from mind, from consciousness ?
Why, but because thou art enslaved by mystical religious
speculation, because the primary principle in thee is the
imagination, thought being only secondary and serving but to
throw into formulae the products of the imagination, because
thou feelest at ease and at home only in the deceptive twilight
of mysticism.

Mysticism is deuteroscopy a fabrication of phrases having a
double meaning. The mystic speculates concerning the essence
of Nature or of man, but under, and by means of, the suppo
sition that he is speculating concerning another, a personal
being, distinct from both. The mystic has the same objects as
the plain, self-conscious thinker ; but the real object is regarded
by the mystic, not as itself, but as an imaginary being, and
hence the imaginary object is to him the real object. Thus
here, in the mystical doctrine of the two principles in God,
the real object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology ; i.e.,
pathology is converted into theology. There would be nothing
to urge against this, if, consciously, real pathology were recog
nised and expressed as theology ; indeed, it is precisely our
task to show that theology is nothing else than an unconscious,
esoteric pathology, anthropology, and psychology, and that
therefore real anthropology, real pathology, and real psycho
logy have far more claim to the name of theology, than has

88 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

theology itself, because this is nothing more than an imaginary
psychology and anthropology. But this doctrine or theory is
supposed and for this reason it is mystical and fantastic to
be not pathology, but theology, in the old or ordinary sense of
the word ; it is supposed that we have here unfolded to us the
life of a Being distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only
our own nature which is unfolded, though at the same time
again shut up from us by the fact that this nature is repre
sented as inhering in another being. The mystic philosopher
supposes that in God, not in us human individuals, that
would be far too trivial a truth, reason first appears after the
Passion of Nature ; that not man, but God, has wrestled him
self out of the obscurity of confused feelings and impulses
into the clearness of knowledge ; that not in our subjective,
limited mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous
tremors of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light;
in short, he supposes that his theory presents not a history of
human throes, but a history of the development, i.e., the throes
of God for developments (or transitions) are birth-struggles.
But, alas ! this supposition itself belongs only to the patho
logical element.

If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the
Light of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine
essence ; so, on the other hand, the Night or Nature in God,
represents to us the Pensees confuses of Leibnitz as divine
powers. But the Pensees confuses confused, obscure concep
tions and thoughts, or more correctly images, represent the
flesh, matter ; a pure intelligence, separate from matter, has
only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e., fleshly ideas, no
material images, exciting the imagination and setting the blood
in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies nothing
else than this : God is not only a spiritual but also a material,
corporeal, fleshly being ; but as man is man, and receives his
designation, in virtue not of his fleshly nature, but of his mind,
so is it with God.

But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure,
mystical, indefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude,
but hence all the more precise and striking expression, flesh, it
substitutes the equivocal, abstract words, nature and ground.
" As nothing is before or out of God, he must have the ground
of his existence in himself. This all philosophies say, but
they speak of this ground as a mere idea, without making it

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 89

something real. This ground of his existence which God has
in himself, is not God considered absolutely, i.e., in so far as
he exists ; it is only the ground of his existence. It is
Nature in God ; an existence inseparable from him, it is true,
but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may be illus
trated by gravitation and light in nature." But this ground is
the non-intelligent in God. " That which is the commence
ment of an intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent."
" In the strict sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent
principle. Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality
of the Creator." " With abstract ideas of God as actus puris-
simus, such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such
as the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature,
is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is some
thing more real than a mere moral order of the world, and has
quite another and a more living motive power in himself than
is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract idealists.
Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as empty
and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any
other dogmatic system." " So long as the God of modern
theism remains the simple, supposed purely essential but
in fact nonessential Being that all modern systems make
him, so long as a real duality is not recognised in God,
and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to the expansive
affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal God be
scientific honesty." " All consciousness is concentration, is a
gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force
by which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of
personality, the force of egoism." "How should there be a fear
of God, if there were no strength in him ? But that there
should be something in God, which is mere force and strength,
cannot be held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he
is this alone and nothing besides."*

But what then is force and strength which is merely such,
if not corporeal force and strength ? Dost them know any
power which stands at thy command, in distinction from
the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power?
If them canst effect nothing through kindness and the argu
ments of reason, force is what them must take refuge in. But

* Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427.
Denkmal Jacobi's, s. 82, 97-99.

90 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

canst thou " effect " anything without strong arms and fists ?
Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the
moral order of the world, " another and more living motive
power " than the lever of the criminal court ? Is not Nature
without body also an "empty, abstract" idea, a "jejune sub-
tilty ? " Is not the mystery of Nature the mystery of corpo
reality ? Is not the system of a " living realism " the system of
the organized body ? Is there, in general, any other force, the
opposite of intelligence, than the force of flesh and blood,
any other strength of Nature than the strength of the fleshly
impulses ? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it
not the sexual feeling ? Who does not remember the old pro
verb : " Amare et sapere vix Deo competit ? " So that if we
would posit in God a Nature, an existence opposed to the light
of intelligence, can we think of a more living, a more real
antithesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and flesh,
of freedom and the sexual impulse ?

Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, is
nothing ; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsubstantial
abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and is obvious,
is nothing without corporeality. The body alone is that nega
tiving, limiting, concentrating, circumscribing force, without
which no personality is conceivable. Take away from thy per
sonality its body, and thou takest away that which holds it
together. The body is the basis, the subject of personality.
Only by the body, is a real personality distinguished from the
imaginary one of a spectre. What sort of abstract, vague,
empty personalities should we be, if we had not the property
of impenetrability, if in the same place, in the same form in
which we are, others might stand at the same time ? Only by
the exclusion of others from the space it occupies, does person
ality prove itself to be real. But a body does not exist without
flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is life, and life alone is cor
poreal reality. But flesh and blood is nothing without the
oxygen of sexual distinction. The distinction of sex is not
superficial, or limited to certain parts of the body ; it is an
essential one : it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance
of man, is manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However
spiritual and super-sensual the man may be, he remains always
a man ; and it is the same with the woman. Hence person
ality is nothing without distinction of sex ; personality is
essentially distinguished into masculine and feminine. Where

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 91

there is no thou, there is no I ; but the distinction between I
and thou, the fundamental condition of all personality, of all
consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, when felt as the dis
tinction between man and woman. The thou between man and
woman has quite another sound, than the monotonous thou
between friends.

Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing
else than difference of sex. A personal being apart from
Nature is nothing else than a being without sex, and con
versely. Nature is said to be predicated of God, "in the
sense in which it is said of a man, that he is of a strong, healthy
nature." But what is more feeble, what more insupportable,
what more contrary to Nature than a person without sex, or a
person, who in character, manners, or feelings, denies sex ?
What is virtue, the excellence of man as man ? Manhood. Of
man as woman? Womanhood. But man exists only as man and
woman. The strength, the healthiness of man, consists there
fore in this : that as a woman, he be truly woman ; as man,
truly man. Thou repudiatest " the horror of all that is real,
which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by contact with the
real." Repudiate then before all, thy own horror for the dis
tinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature, neither is
he polluted by being associated with the idea of sex. In
renouncing sex, thou renouncest thy whole principle. A moral
God apart from Nature is without basis ; but the basis of
morality is the distinction of sex. Even the brute is capable
of self-sacrificing love in virtue of the sexual distinction. All
the glory of Nature, all its power, all its wisdom and pro
fundity, concentrates and individualizes itself in distinction of
sex. Why then dost thou shrink from naming the nature of
God by its true name ? Evidently, only because thou hast a
general horror of things in their truth and reality ; because
thou lookest at all things through the deceptive vapours of
mysticism. For this very reason then, because Nature in God
is only a delusive, unsubstantial appearance, a fantastic ghost
of Nature, for it is based, as we have said, not on flesh and
blood, not on a real ground, this attempt to establish a per
sonal God is once more a failure, and I, too, conclude with the
words, "the denial of a personal God will be scientific
honesty": and, I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not
declared and shown in unequivocal terms, first a priori, on
speculative grounds, that form, place, corporeality, and sex, do

92 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

not contradict the idea of the Godhead ; and secondly,
a posteriori, for the reality of a personal being, is sustained
only on empirical grounds, what sort of form God has, where
he exists, in heaven, and lastly, of what sex he is.

Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of Ger
many courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant of
rationalism which yet clings to them, in flagrant contradiction
with their true character ; and let them complete their system,
by converting the mystical "potence" of Nature in God into
a really powerful, generating God.

The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob
Bohme. But in the original it has a far deeper and more
interesting significance, than in its second modernized and
emasculated edition. Jacob Bohme has a profoundly religious
mind. Eeligion is the centre of his life and thought. But at
the same time, the significance which has been given to Nature
in modern times by the study of natural science, by Spino-
zism, materialism, empiricism has taken possession of his
religious sentiment. He has opened his senses to Nature,
thrown a glance into her mysterious being; but it alarms him;
and he cannot harmonize this terror at Nature with his religious
conceptions. " When I looked into the great depths of this
world, and at the sun and stars, also at the clouds, also at the rain
and snow, and considered in my mind the whole creation of
this world; then I found in all things evil and good, love and
anger, in unreasoning things, such as wood, stone, earth, and

the elements, as well as in men and beasts But

because I found that in all things there was good and evil, in
the elements as well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well
in the world with the godless as with the pious, also that the
barbarous nations possess the best lands, and have more pro
sperity than the godly ; I was therefore altogether melancholy
and extremely troubled, and the Scriptures could not console
me, though almost all well known to me; and therewith assuredly
the devil was not idle, for he often thrust upon me heathenish
thoughts, of which I will here be silent."* But while his
mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature,
which did not harmonize with the religious idea of a heavenly

* Kernhafter Auszug J. Bohme: Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58,

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 93

Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affected by her
resplendent aspects. Jacob Bohme has a sense for nature.
He preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the mineralogist, of
the botanist, of the chemist the joys of " godless Natural
science." He is enraptured by the splendour of jewels, the
tones of metals, the hues and odours of plants, the beauty and
gentleness of many animals. In another place, speaking of the
revelation of God in the phenomena of light, the process by
which " there arises in the Godhead the wondrous and beautiful
structure of the heavens in various colours and kinds, and every
spirit shows itself in its form specially," he says, " I can com
pare it with nothing but with the noblest precious stones, such
as the ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper,
hyacinth, amethyst, beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like."
Elsewhere : " But regarding the precious stones, such as the
carbuncle, ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, and the like, which are
the very best, these have the very same origin the flash of light
in love. For that flash is born in tenderness, and is the heart
in the centre of the Fountain-spirit, wherefore those stones also
are mild, powerful, and lovely." It is evident that Jacob Bohme
had no bad taste in mineralogy ; that he had delight in flowers
also, and consequently a faculty for botany, is proved by the
following passages among others: "The heavenly powers
gave birth to heavenly joy-giving fruits and colours, to all sorts
of trees and shrubs, whereupon grows the beauteous and lovely
fruit of life : also there spring up in these powers all sorts of
flowers with beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their
taste is various, in each according to its quality and kind,
altogether holy, divine, and joy-giving." " If thou desirest to
contemplate the heavenly, divine pomp and glory, as they are,
and to know what sort of products, pleasure, or joys there are
above : look diligently at this world, at the varieties of fruits
and plants that grow upon the earth, trees, shrubs, vegetables,
roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything that is there,
and that thy heart can search out. All this is an image of the
heavenly pomp."*

A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the
origin of Nature to Jacob Bohme ; Nature appealed too strongly
to his senses, and lay too near his heart ; hence he sought for

* L. c p. 480, 338, 340, 323.

94 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

a natural explanation of Nature ; but he necessarily found no
other ground of explanation than those qualities of Nature
which made the strongest impression on him. Jacob Bohme
this is his essential character is a mystical natural philoso
pher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,* for according to
him, " all things had their origin in fire and water." Nature
had fascinated Jacob's religious sentiments, not in vain did
he receive his mystical light from the shining of tin utensils ;
but the religious sentiment works only within itself ; it has not
the force, not the courage, to press forward to the examination
of things in their reality ; it looks at all things through the
medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in the entrancing,
soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it sees all in
images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind in an
opposite manner ; hence he must place this opposition in God
himself, for the supposition of two independently existing,
opposite, original principles would have afflicted his religious
sentiment ; he must distinguish in God himself, a gentle, bene
ficent element, and a fierce consuming one. Everything fiery,
bitter, harsh, contracting, dark, cold, comes from a divine
harshness and bitterness ; everything mild, lustrous, warming,
tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft, luminous quality in
God. " Thus are the creatures on the earth, in the water, and
in the air, each creature out of its own science, out of good
and evil. ... As one sees before one's eyes that there are
good and evil creatures ; as venomous beasts and serpents
from the centre of the nature of darkness, from the power of
the fierce quality, which only want to dwell in darkness,
abiding in caves and hiding themselves from the sun. By each
animal's food and dwelling we see whence they have sprung,
for every creature needs to dwell with its mother, and yearns
after her, as is plain to the sight," " Gold, silver, precious
stones, and all bright metal, has its origin in the light, which
appeared before the times of anger," &c. " Everything which
in the substance of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is
flowing, and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it
is in the eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself;
for in the nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can

* The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on
volcanic ground. " The town of Go'rlitz is paved throughout with pure
basalt." Charpentier, Mineral. Geographic der Chursachsischen Lande,
p. 19.

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 95

understand no susceptibility or pain, they being one in them
selves.* In short, heaven is as rich as the earth. Everything
that is on this earth, is in heaven, f all that is in Nature is in
God. But in the latter it is divine, heavenly ; in the former,
earthly, visible, external, material, but yet the same." " When
I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou must not understand
me of earthly things, such as are in this world; for it is not my
meaning, that in heaven there grows a dead, hard, wooden tree,
or a stone of earthly qualities. No : my meaning is heavenly
and spiritual, but yet truthful and literal ; thus, I mean no
other things than what I write in the letters of the alphabet ;"
i.e., in heaven there are the same trees and flowers, but the
trees in heaven are the trees which bloom and exhale in my
imagination, without making coarse material impressions upon
me ; the trees on earth are the trees which I perceive through
my senses. The distinction is the distinction between ima
gination and perception. " It is not my undertaking," says
Jacob Bohme himself, " to describe the course of all stars,
their place and name,, or how they have yearly their conjunc
tion or opposition, or quadrate, or the like, what they do
yearly and hourly, which through long years has been dis
covered by wise, skilful, ingenious men, by diligent contem
plation and observation, and deep thought and calculation. I
have not learned and studied these things, and leave scholars to
treat of them, but my undertaking is to write according to the
spirit and thought, not according to sight."*

The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to
establish theism, especially the theism which regards the Su
preme Being as a personal being. But personal theism con
ceives God as a personal being, separate from all material
things ; it excludes from him all development, because that is
nothing else than the self-separation of a being from circum
stances and conditions which do not correspond to its true

* L. c. p. 468, 617, 618.

f According to Swedeuborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and
dwellings. " Their dwellings are altogether such as the dwellings or houses
on earth, but far more beautiful ; there are apartments, rooms, and sleeping-
chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and round about
gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields." (E. v. S. auserlesene Schriften, 1 Th.
Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world is the
other world ; but for that reason the other world is this world.

I L. c. p. 339, p. 69.

96 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

idea. And this does not take place in God, because in him
beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished, because
he is at once what he is, is from the beginning what he is to
be, what he can be ; he is the pure unity of existence and
essence, reality and idea, act and will. Deus suum Esse est.
Herein theism accords with the essence of religion. All re
ligions, however positive they may be, rest on abstraction ;
they are distinguished only in that from which the abstraction
is made. Even the Homeric gods, with all their living strength
and likeness to man, are abstract forms ; they have bodies, like
men, but bodies from which the limitations and difficulties of
the human body are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is
essentially an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this
abstraction is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the essen
tial stand-point of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does
he make his abstraction.

The abstraction expresses a judgment, an affirmative and a
negative one at the same time, praise and blame. What man
praises and approves, that is God to him ;* what he blames,
condemns, is the non-divine. Religion is a judgment. The
most essential condition in religion in the idea of the
divine being is accordingly the discrimination of the praise
worthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect from the imper
fect ; in a w r ord, of the positive from the negative. The cultus
itself consists in nothing else than in the continual renewal of
the origin of religion a solemnizing of the critical discrimi
nation between the divine and the non-divine.

The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the death
of abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man. In religion
man frees himself from the limits of life ; he here lets fall
what oppresses him, obstructs him, affects him repulsively;
God is the self- consciousness of man freed from all discordant
elements ; man feels himself free, happy, blessed in his religion,
because he only here lives the life of genius, and keeps holiday.
The basis of the divine idea lies for him outside of that idea itself;
its truth lies in the prior judgment, in the fact that all which
he excludes from God is previously judged by him to be non-
divine, and what is non- divine to be worthless, nothing. If
he were to include the attaining of this idea in the .idea itself, it

* " Quidquid enim unus quisque super osetera colit : hoc illi Deus est."
Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. 1.

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 97

would lose its most essential significance, its true value, its
beatifying charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity
of man, freed from all else, from every thing objective, having
relation only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only
itself his most subjective, his inmost self. The process of
discrimination, the separating of the intelligent from the non-
intelligent, of personality from nature, of the perfect from the
imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place in the subject, not in
the object, and the idea of God lies not at the beginning but at
the end of sensible existence, of the world, of Nature. "Where
Nature ceases, God begins," because God is the ne plus ultra,
the last limit of abstraction. That from which I can no longer
abstract is God, the last thought which I am capable of grasp
ing the last, i.e., the highest. Id quo nihil majus cogitari
potest, Deus est. That this Omega of sensible existence be
comes an Alpha also, is easily comprehensible ; but the essen
tial point is, that he is the Omega. The Alpha is primarily
a consequence ; because God is the last or highest, he is also
the first. And this predicate the first Being, has by no
means immediately a cosmogonic significance, but only implies
the highest rank. The creation in the Mosaic religion has
for its end to secure to Jehovah the predicate of the highest
and first, the true and exclusive God in opposition to idols.

The effort to establish the personality of God through
Nature, has therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, profane
mingling of philosophy and religion, a complete absence of
criticism and knowledge concerning the genesis of the personal
God. Where personality is held the essential attribute of
God, where it is said an impersonal God is no God ; there
personality is held to be in and by itself the highest and most
real thing, there it is presupposed that everything which is
not a person is dead, is nothing, that only personal existence
is real, absolute existence, is life and truth : but Nature is
impersonal, and is therefore a trivial thing. The truth of
personality rests only on the untruth of Nature. To predicate
personality of God is nothing else than to declare personality
as the absolute essence ; but personality is only conceived
in distinction, in abstraction from Nature. Certainly a
merely personal God is an abstract God ; but so he ought to
be that is involved in the idea of him ; for he is nothing
else than the personal nature of man positing itself out of all
connexion with the world, making itself free from all depend-*

F

98 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ence on nature. In the personality of God man consecrates
the supernaturalness, immortality, independence, unlimitedness
of his own personality.

In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation in
this, that only in the attribute of personality does the personal
man meet with himself, find himself. Substance, pure spirit,
mere reason, does not satisfy him, is too abstract for him, i.e.,
does not express himself, does not lead him back to himself.
And man is content, happy, only when he is with himself, with
his own nature. Hence, the more personal a man is, the
stronger is his need of a personal God. The free, abstract
thinker knows nothing higher than freedom ; he does not
need to attach it to a personal being ; for him freedom in it
self, as such, is a real positive thing. A mathematical, astro
nomical mind, a man of pure understanding, an objective man,
who is not shut up in himself, who feels free and happy only in
the contemplation of objective rational relations, in the reason
which lies in things in themselves such a man will regard
the substance of Spinoza, or some similar idea, as his highest
being, and be full of antipathy towards a personal, i. e., sub
jective God. Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher, be
cause (in this respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at
unity with himself; as was his God, so was his philosophy
personal, subjective. The personal God cannot be established
otherwise than as he is established by Jacobi and his disciples.
Personality is proved only in a personal manner.

Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural
basis ; but this natural basis is attained only when I cease to
grope in the darkness of mysticism, when I step forth into the
clear daylight of real Nature, and exchange the idea of the
personal God for the idea of personality in general. But into
the idea of the personal God, the positive idea of whom is
liberated, disembodied personality, released from the limiting
force of Nature, to smuggle again this very Nature, is as per
verse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum with the nectar of the
gods, in order to give the ethereal beverage a solid foundation.
Certainly the ingredients of animal blood are not to be derived
from the celestial juice which nourishes the gods. But the
flower of sublimation arises only through the evaporation of
matter ; why, then, wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very
matter from which thou hast disengaged it? Certainly, the
impersonal existence of Nature is not to be explained by the

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 99

idea of personality; but where personality is a truth, or, rather,
the absolute truth, Nature has no positive significance, and
consequently no positive basis. The literal creation out of
nothing is here the only sufficient ground of explanation ; for
it simply says this : Nature is nothing ; and this precisely
expresses the significance which Nature has for absolute
personality.

100 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTEE X.

THE MYSTEKY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT
OF NOTHING.

CREATION is the spoken word of God ; the creative, cosmo-
gonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To
speak is an act of the will ; thus, creation is a product of the
Will : as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the
human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the
Will : not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the
imagination the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The
culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out
of nothing.* As the eternity of the world or of matter imports
nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation
of the world out of nothing imports simply the non- essentiality,
the nothingness of the world. The commencement of a thing
is immediately connected, in idea if not in time, with its end.
"Lightly come, lightly go." The will has called it into
existence the will calls it back again into nothing. When ?
The time is indifferent : its existence or non-existence depends
only on the will. But this will is not its own will : not only
because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the prior
reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus the
nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will. The
will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will at least
the possible will that it should not exist. The existence of
the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary, unreliable, i.e.,
unreal existence.

Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omni
potence : but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity
exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations,

* " Quare fecit Deus coelum et terrain ? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei
causa est cceli et terrse et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam ccelum et terra.
Qui autem dicit : quare voluit facere ccelum et terrain ? majus aliquid quse-
rit, quam est voluntas Dei, nih.il enim majus invenire potest." Augustinus
(de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2).

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. lOl

and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and
reality : nothing else than the ability to posit everything real
as unreal everything conceivable as possible : nothing else
than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical
with the imagination, the power of self-will.* The strongest
and most characteristic expression of subjective arbitrari
ness is, " it has pleased ;" the phrase, " it has pleased God
to call the world of bodies and spirits into existence," is the
most undeniable proof that individual subjectivity, individual
arbitrariness, is regarded as the highest essence the omnipo
tent world-principle. On this ground, creation out of nothing
as a work of the Almighty Will falls into the same category
with miracle, or rather it is the first miracle, not only in time
but in rank also ; the principle of which all further miracles
are the spontaneous result. The proof of this is history itself ;
all miracles have been vindicated, explained, and illustrated by
appeal to the omnipotence which created the world out of
nothing. Why should not He who made the world out of
nothing, make wine out of water, bring human speech from
the mouth of an ass, and charm water out of a rock ? But
miracle is, as we shall see further on, only a product and object
of the imagination, and hence creation out of nothing, as the
primitive miracle, is of the same character. For this reason
the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been pronounced a
supernatural one, to which reason of itself could not have
attained ; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the
fact that the Pagan philosophers represented the world to have
been formed by the Divine Reason out of already existing
matter. But this supernatural principle is no other than the
principle of subjectivity, which in Christianity exalted itself
to an unlimited, universal monarchy ; whereas the ancient
philosophers were not subjective enough to regard the ab
solutely subjective being as the exclusively absolute being,
because they limited subjectivity by the contemplation of the
world or reality because to them the world was a truth.

Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one
with Providence ; for the idea of Providence originally, in its

* A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in the
emotional nature, as is both directly and indirectly declared in this work.
But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external mani
festation of force.

102 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

true religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed
upon and limited hy the unbelieving understanding is one
with the idea of miracle. The proof of Providence is miracle.*
Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things
stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in
opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Provi
dence cancels the laws of Nature ; it interrupts the course of
necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to
causes ; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will,
that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle
is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes
wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found
in water ; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a
miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only
proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an ex
pression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation
out of nothing can only be understood and explained in con
nexion with Providence ; for miracle properly implies nothing
more than that the miracle worker is the same as he who
brought forth all things by his mere will God the Creator.

But Providence has relation essentially to man. It is for
man's sake that Providence makes of things whatever it pleases :
it is for man's sake that it supersedes the authority and reality
of a law otherwise omnipotent. The admiration of Providence
in Nature, especially in the animal kingdom, is nothing else
than an admiration of Nature, and therefore belongs merely to
naturalism, though to a religious naturalism ;f for in Nature
is revealed only natural, not divine Providence not Pro
vidence as it is an object to religion. Keligious Providence
reveals itself only in miracles especially in the miracle of the
Incarnation, the central point of religion. But we nowhere
read that God, for the sake of brutes, became a brute the very

* " Certissimum divinse providentise testimonium prsebent miracula."
H. Grotius (de Verit. Eel. Christ. 1. i. 13).

f It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the
Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet more
of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But it is by no means
the characteristic, the Christian tendency of the Christian religion. The
Christian, the religious Providence, is quite another than that which clothes
the lilies and feeds the ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in
the water, if he has not learned to swim ; but the Christian, the religious
Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water un
harmed.

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 103

idea of this is, in the eyes of religion, impious and ungodly ;
or that God ever performed a miracle for the sake of animals or
plants. On the contrary, we read that a poor fig-tree, because it
bore no fruit at a time when it could not bear it, was cursed,
purely in order to give men an example of the power of faith
over Nature ; and again, that when the tormenting devils were
driven out of men, they were driven into brutes. It is true
we also read : " No sparrow falls to the ground without your
Father;" but these sparrows have 110 more worth and importance
than the hairs on the head of a man, which are all numbered.

Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian spirit,
no other Providence, than its senses or its organs in general.
A bird which loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel; it neces
sarily goes to destruction if no miracle happens. We read
indeed that a raven brought food to the prophet Elijah, but
not (at least to my knowledge) that an animal was supported
by other than natural means. But if a man believes that
he also has no other Providence than the powers of his
race his senses and understanding, he is in the eyes of
religion, and of all those who speak the language of religion,
an irreligious man ; because he believes only in a natural Pro
vidence, and a natural Providence is in the eyes of religion as
good as none. Hence Providence has relation essentially to
men, and even among men only to the religious. " God is the
Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe." It
belongs, like religion, only to man ; it is intended to express
the essential distinction of man from the brute, to rescue man
from the tyranny of the forces of Nature. Jonah in the whale,
Daniel in the den of lions, are examples of the manner in
which Providence distinguishes (religious) men from brutes.
If therefore the Providence which manifests itself in the organs
with which animals catch and devour their prey, and which is
so greatly admired by Christian naturalists, is a truth, the Pro
vidence of the Bible, the Providence of religion, is a falsehood ;
and vice versa-. What pitiable and at the same time ludicrous
hypocrisy is the attempt to do homage to both, to Nature and
the Bible at once ! How does Nature contradict the Bible !
How does the Bible contradict Nature ! The God of Nature
reveals himself by giving to the lion strength and appropriate
organs in order that, for the preservation of his life, he may in
case of necessity kill and devour even a human being ;
the God of the Bible reveals himself by interposing his

THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIAN1TY.

own aid to rescue the human being from the jaws of the
lion !*

Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value of
man, in distinction from other natural beings and things ; it
exempts him from the connexion of the universe. Providence
is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his existence,
a conviction in which he renounces faith in the reality of exter
nal things ; it is the idealism of religion. Faith in Providence
is therefore identical with faith in personal immortality ; save
only, that in the latter the infinite value of existence is
expressed in relation to time, as infinite duration. He who
prefers no special claims, who is indifferent about himself,
who identifies himself with the world, who sees himself as a
part merged in the whole, such a one believes in no Provi
dence, i.e., in no special Providence ; but only special Providence
is Providence in the sense of religion. Faith in Providence is
faith in one's own worth, the faith of man in himself; hence
the beneficent consequences of this faith, but hence also
false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true, does not
rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself to
the blessed God. God concerns himself about me ; he has in
view my happiness, my salvation ; he wills that I shall be blest ;
but that is my will also : thus, my interest is God's interest,
my own will is God's will, my own aim is God's aim, God's
love for me nothing else than my self-love deified. Thus when
I believe in Providence, in what do I believe but in the divine
reality and significance of my own being ?

But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made
dependent on belief in Providence. He who denies that there
is a Providence, denies that there is a God, or what is the
same thing that God is God ; for a God who is not the
Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who is
wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Conse
quently, the belief in God is nothing but the belief in human
dignity,* the belief in the absolute reality and significance of
the human nature. But belief in a (religious) Providence is

* In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Providence,
the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the English
natural philosophers.

f " Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt." Bacon
(Serm. Fidel. 16).

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 105

belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versa ; the latter,
therefore, can have no other significance than that of Provi
dence as just developed, and it has actually no other. Beligion
sufficiently expresses this by making man the end of creation.
All things exist, not for their own sake, but for the sake of
man. He who, like the pious Christian naturalists, pro
nounces this to be pride, declares Christianity itself to be
pride ; for to say that the material world exists for the sake of
man, implies infinitely less than to say that God or at least,
if we follow Paul, a being who is almost God, scarcely to be
distinguished from God becomes man for the sake of men.

But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true cause
of creation, for the end is the principle of action. The
distinction between man as the end of creation, and man as its
cause, is only that the cause is the latent, inner man, the
essential man, whereas the end is the self-evident, empirical,
individual man, that man recognises himself as the end of
creation, but not as the cause, because he distinguishes the
cause, the essence from himself as another personal being.*
But this other being, this creative principle, is in fact nothing
else than his subjective nature separated from the limits of
individuality and materiality, i.e., of objectivity, unlimited will,
personality posited out of all connexion with the world,
which by creation, i.e., the positing of the w~orld, of objectivity,
of another, as a dependent, finite, non-essential existence,
gives itself the certainty of its exclusive reality. The point
in question in the Creation is not the truth and reality of the
world, but the truth and reality of personality, of subjectivity
in distinction from the world. The point in question is the
personality of God ; but the personality of God is the

* In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It
runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition, 1778) thus :
" At nos ante mundi constitutionem tuimus, ratione futures nostrse pro-
ductionis, in ipso Deo quodammodo turn praeexistentes, Pivini igitur
Verbi sive Rationis, nos creaturse rationales sumus, et per eum primi esse
dicimur, quoniam in principio erat verbum." Yet more decidedly, however,
has Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the creative prin
ciple, the ground of the world. " Man, who, before time was, existed in
eternity, works with God all the works that God wrought a thousand
years ago, and now, after a thousand years, still works." " All creatures
have sprung forth through man," Predigten, vor u, zu Tauleri Zeiten
(Ed. c. p. 5. p. 119.)

F 3

106 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

personality of man freed from all the conditions and limita
tions of Nature. Hence the fervent interest in the Creation,
the horror of all pantheistic cosmogonies. The Creation, like
the idea of a personal God in general, is not a scientific, but
a personal matter; not an object of the free intelligence, but
of the feelings ; for the point on which it hinges is only the
guarantee, the last conceivable proof and demonstration of
personality or subjectivity as an essence quite apart, having
nothing in common with Nature, a supra-and extramundane
entity.*

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of
his is his God : the distinguishing of God from Nature is
nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature.
The antithesis of pantheism and personalism resolves itself
into the question : is the nature of man transcendental or
immanent, supranaturalistic or naturalistic ? The speculations
and controversies concerning the personality or impersonality
of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical, and odious;
for the speculatists, especially those who maintain the person
ality, do not call the thing by the right name ; they put the
light under a bushel. While they in truth speculate only
concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own
instinct of self-preservation ; they yet will not allow that
they are splitting their brains only about themselves; they
speculate under the delusion that they are searching out the
mysteries of another being. Pantheism identifies man with
Nature, whether with its visible appearance, or its abstract
essence, Personalism isolates, separates him from Nature ;
converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute
essence by himself. This is the distinction. If, therefore, you
would be clear on these subjects, exchange your mystical,
perverted anthropology, which you call theology, for real
anthropology, and speculate in the light of consciousness and
Nature concerning the difference or identity of the human
essence with the essence of Nature. You yourselves admit
that the essence of the pantheistical God is nothing but the
essence of Nature. Why, then, will you only see the mote in

* Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of its
kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or to
derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely, because
they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on
which the Creation really turns.

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 107

the eyes of your opponents, and not observe the very obvious
beam in your own eyes ? why make yourselves an exception to
a universally valid law? Admit that your personal God is
nothing else than your own personal nature, that while you
believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God,
you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra-and
extranaturalism of your own self.

In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true principle is
concealed by the intermingling of universal, metaphysical,
and even pantheistic definitions. But one need only be
attentive to the closer definitions to convince oneself that
the true principle of creation is the self-affirmation of sub
jectivity in distinction from Nature. God produces the world
outside himself; at first it is only an idea, a plan, a resolve;
now it becomes an act, and therewith it steps forth out of God
as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self-subsistent object.
But just so subjectivity in general, which distinguishes itself
from the world, which takes itself for an essence distinct from
the world, posits the world out of itself as a separate existence,
indeed, this positing out of self, and the distinguishing of self,
is one act. When therefore the world is posited outside of
God, God is posited by himself, is distinguished from the
world. What else then is God but your subjective nature,
when the w r orld is separated from it ?* It is true that when
astute reflection intervenes, the distinction between extra
and intra is disavowed as a finite and human (?) distinction.
But to the disavowal by the understanding, which in rela
tion to religion is pure misunderstanding, no credit is due. If
it is meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of the religious
consciousness ; it does away with the possibility, the very prin
ciple of the creation, for this rests solely on the reality of the
abovementioned distinction. Moreover, the effect of the crea-

* It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, the
existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. For,
apart from the consideration that the future destruction of the world
expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i.e., its non-divine-
ness, God is in a special manner only in man ; but I am at home only
where I am specially at home. " Nowhere is God properly God, but in the
soul. In all creatures there is something of God; hut in the soul God exists
completely, for it is his resting-place." Predigten etzlicher Lehrer, &c.,
p. 19. And the existence of things in God, especially where it has no panthe
istic significance, and any such is here excluded, is equally an idea without
reality, and does not express the special sentiments of religion.

108 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

tion, all its majesty for the feelings and the imagination, is
quite lost, if the production of the world out of God is not
taken in the real sense. What is it to make, to create, to
produce, hut to make that which in the first instance is only
subjective, and so far invisible, non-existent, into something
objective, perceptible, so that other beings besides me may
know and enjoy it, and thus to put something out of myself,
to make it distinct from myself ? Where there is no reality or
possibility of an existence external to me, there can be no
question of making or creating. God is eternal, but the world
had a commencement ; God was, when as yet the world was
not ; God is invisible, not cognizable by the senses, but the
world is visible, palpable, material, and therefore outside of
God ; for how can the material as such, body, matter, be in
God ? The world exists outside of God, in the same sense in
which a tree, an animal, the world in general, exists outside of
my conception, outside of myself, is an existence distinct from
subjectivity. Hence, only when such an external existence is
admitted, as it was by the older philosophers and theologians,
have we the genuine, unmixed doctrine of the religious con
sciousness. The speculative theologians and philosophers of
modern times, on the contrary, foist in all sorts of pantheistic
definitions, although they deny the principle of pantheism ;
and the result of this process is simply an absolutely self-
contradictory, insupportable fabrication of their own.

Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else than
subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and infinity
through the consciousness that the world is created, is a pro
duct of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstantial exist
ence. The "nothing" out of which the world was produced,
is a still inherent nothingness. When thou sayest the world
was made out of nothing, thou conceivest the world itself as
nothing, thou clearest away from thy head all the limits to thy
imagination, to thy feelings, to thy will, for the world is the
limitation of thy will, of thy desire ; the world alone obstructs
thy soul; it alone is the wall of separation between thee
and God, thy beatified, perfected nature. Thus, subjec
tively, thou annihilatest the world ; thou thinkest God by him
self, i.e., absolutely unlimited subjectivity, the subjectivity or
soul which enjoys itself alone, which needs not the world,
which knows nothing of the painful bonds of matter. In the
inmost depths of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 109

world, for where the world is, there is matter, and where there
is matter there is weight and resistance, space and time, limit
ation and necessity. Nevertheless, there is a world, there is
matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma of this con
tradiction ? How dost thou expel the world from thy con
sciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beatitude of the
unlimited soul ? Only by making the world itself a product
of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence always hovering
between existence and non-existence, always awaiting its anni
hilation. Certainly the act of creation does not suffice to ex
plain the existence of the world or matter (the two are not
separable), but it is a total misconception to demand this of
it, for the fundamental idea of the creation is this : there is to
be no world, no matter; and hence its end is daily looked
forward to with longing. The world in its truth does not here
exist at all, it is regarded only as the obstruction, the limita
tion of subjectivity; how could the world in its truth and
reality be deduced from a principle which denies the world?

In order to recognise the above developed significance of the
creation as the true one, it is only necessary seriously to con
sider the fact, that the chief point in the creation is not the
production of earth and water, plants and animals, for which
indeed there is no God, but the production of personal beings
of spirits, according to the ordinary phrase. God is the idea
of personality as itself a person, subjectivity existing in itself
apart from the world, existing for self alone, without wants,
posited as absolute existence, the me without a thee. But as
absolute existence for self alone contradicts the idea of true
life, the idea of love ; as self-consciousness is essentially united
with the consciousness of a thee, as solitude cannot, at least in
perpetuity, preserve itself from tedium and uniformity ; thought
immediately proceeds from the divine Being to other conscious
beings, and expands the idea of personality which was at first
condensed in one being to a plurality of persons.* If the

* Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us not only
the Divine power, but also the Divine love. " Quia bonus est (Deus), sumus."
(Augustin.) In the beginning, before the world, God was alone. " Ante
omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem ;
quia nihil extrinsecus prseter ipsum." (Tertullian.) But there is no higher
happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting.
And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man conceives imparting love as
the principle of existence. " Extasis boni non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso."

110 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

person is conceived physically, as a real man, in which form he
is a being with wants, he appears first at the end of the physical
world, when the conditions of his existence are present, as the
goal of creation. If, on the other hand, man is conceived
abstractly as a person, as is the case in religious speculation,
this circuit is dispensed with, and the task is the direct deduc
tion of the person, i.e., the self-demonstration, the ultimate
self- verification of the human personality. It is true that the
divine personality is distinguished in every possible way from
the human in order to veil their identity ; but these distinctions
are either purely fantastic, or they are mere assertions, devices
which exhibit the invalidity of the attempted deduction. All
positive grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to the
conditions, to the grounds, which urge upon the me the con
sciousness of the necessity of another personal being. Specu
late as much as you will, you will never derive your personality
from God, if you have not beforehand introduced it, if God
himself be not already the idea of your personality, your own
subjective nature.

(Dionysius A.) Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only t>y
itself. The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself, affirming itself.
But the highest self-consciousness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love
which confers happiness. God is the bliss of existence.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 111

CHAPTER XL
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.

THE doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism ; indeed,
it is the characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of the Jewish
religion. The principle which lies at its foundation is, how
ever, not so much the principle of subjectivity as of egoism.
The doctrine of the Creation in its characteristic significance
arises only on that stand-point where man in practice makes
Nature merely the servant of his will and needs, and hence in
thought also degrades it to a mere machine, a product of the
will. Now its existence is intelligible to him, since he explains
and interprets it out of himself, in accordance with his own
feelings and notions. The question, Whence is Nature or the
world ? presupposes wonder that it exists, or the question,
Why does it exist ? But this wonder, this question, arises only
where man has separated himself from Nature and made it a
mere object of will. The author of the Book of Wisdom says
truly of the heathens, that, " for admiration of the beauty of
the world they did not raise themselves to the idea of the
Creator." To him who feels that Nature is lovely, it appears
an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in itself : in
him the question, Why does it exist ? does not arise. Nature
and God are identified in his consciousness, his percep
tion, of the world. Nature, as it impresses his senses, has
indeed had an origin, has been produced, but not created
in the religious sense, is not an arbitrary product. And
by this origin he implies nothing evil ; originating involves
for him nothing impure, undivine ; he conceives his gods
themselves as having had an origin. The generative force
is to him the primal force : he posits, therefore, as the
ground of Nature, a force of Nature, a real, present, visibly
active force, as the ground of reality. Thus does man think
where his relation to the world is assthetic or theoretic, (for the

112 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

theoretic view was originally the aesthetic view, the prima phi-
losophia,) where the idea of the world is to him the idea of the
Cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only where such a theory
was the fundamental principle could there be conceived and
expressed such a thought as that of Anaxagoras : man is born
to behold the world.* The stand-point of theory is the stand
point of harmony with the world. The subjective activity, that
in which man contents himself, allows himself free play, is here
the sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets
Nature subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air,
his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. When,
on the contrary, man places himself only on the practical stand
point and looks at the world from thence, making the practical
stand-point the theoretical one also, he is in disunion with
Nature; he makes Nature the abject vassal of his selfish
interest, of his practical egoism. The theoretic expression of
this egoistical, practical view, according to which Nature is
in itself nothing, is this : Nature or the world is made, created,
the product of a command. God said, Let the world be, and
straightway the world presented itself at His bidding, t

Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief in a
special Divine Providence is the characteristic belief of
Judaism; belief in Providence is belief in miracle ; but belief
in miracle exists where Nature is regarded only as an object
of arbitrariness, of egoism, which uses Nature only as an instru
ment of its own will and pleasure. Water divides or rolls itself
together like a firm mass, dust is changed into lice, a staff into
a serpent, rivers into blood, a rock into a fountain ; in the same
place it is both light and dark at once, the sun now stands still,
now goes backward. And all these contradictions of Nature
happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at the command of
Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is

* In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. 6), it is literally, " for the contemplation
of the sun, the moon and the heavens." Similar ideas were held by other
philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said : " Ipse autem homo ortus est ad
mundum contemplandum et imitandum." Cic. (de Nat.)

f " Hebraei numen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt et quasi im-
perio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in eo quod vult efficiendo,
summamque ejus in omnia potentiam ostendant." Ps. xxxiii. 6. " Verbo
Jehovae eoeli facti sunt." Ps. cxlviii. 5. " Ille jussit eaque creata sunt." J.
Clericus (Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3).

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 113

nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people,
to the exclusion of all other nations, absolute intolerance, the
secret essence of monotheism.

The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense ; they
heard heavenly music in the harmonious course of the stars ;
they saw Nature rise from the foam of the all-producing ocean
as Venus Anadyomene. The Israelites, on the contrary,
opened to Nature only the gastric sense ; their taste for Nature
lay only in the palate ; their consciousness of God in eating
manna. The Greek addicted himself to polite studies, to the
fine arts, to philosophy ; the Israelite did not rise above the
alimentary view of theology. " At even ye shall eat flesh, and
in the morning ye shall be filled with bread ; and ye shall know
that I am the Lord your God."* " And Jacob vowed a vow,
saying, ' If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way
that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so
that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the
Lord be my God."t Eating is the most solemn act or the
initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating the Israelite
celebrates and renews the act of creation ; in eating man
declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the
seventy elders ascended the mountain with Moses, " they saw
God ; and when they had seen God, they ate and drank." t
Thus with them what the sight of the Supreme Being height
ened was the appetite for food.

The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day.
Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in
the world, namely, egoism : and moreover egoism in the form
of religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his servants
come to shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has
only one, only self, as its end. Egoism strengthens cohesion,
concentrates man on himself, gives him a consistent principle
of life ; but it makes him theoretically narrow, because in
different to all which does not relate to the well-being of self.
Hence science, like art, arises only out of polytheism, for
polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying sense of all that is
beautiful and good without distinction, the sense of the world,
of the universe. The Greeks looked abroad into the wide

* Exod. xvi. 12. f Gen. xxviii. 20.

Exod. xxiv. 10, 11. "Tantum abest ut mortui sint, ut contra convivium
hilares celebrarint." Clericus.

114 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

world that they might extend their sphere of vision ; the Jews
to this day pray with their faces turned towards Jerusalem.
In the Israelites, monotheistic egoism excluded the free
theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true, surpassed " all
the children of the east" in understanding and wisdom, and
spoke (treated, agebat) moreover " of trees, from the cedar that
is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the
wall," and also of " beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things,
and of fishes" (1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added
that Solomon did not serve Jehovah with his whole heart ; he
did homage to strange gods and strange women ; and thus he
had the polytheistic sentiment and taste. The polytheistic
sentiment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.

The significance which nature in general had for the Hebrews
is one with their idea of its origin. The mode in which the genesis
of a thing is explained is the candid expression of opinion, of sen
timent respecting it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its
origin. Men used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from
carrion, and other rubbish. It was not because they derived
vermin from so uninviting a source, that they thought con
temptuously of them ; but, on the contrary, because they
thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to them
so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a
vile origin. To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards
achieving the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the
ideal, the idol of the egoistic will is that Will which has un
limited command, which requires no means in order to attain
its end, to realize its object, which immediately by itself, i. e.,
by pure will, calls into existence whatever it pleases. It pains
the egoist that the satisfaction of his wishes and need is only
to be attained immediately, that for him there is a chasm
between the wish and its realization, between the object in the
imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order to
relieve this pain, to make himself free from the limits of reality,
he supposes as the true, the highest being, one who brings
forth an object by the mere I WILL. For this reason, Nature,
the world, was to the Hebrews the product of a dictatorial
word, of a categorical imperative, of a magic fiat.

To that which has no essential existence for me in theory,
I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to
Will I only enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise we
do not honour with a glance : that which is observed has im-

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 115

portance : contemplation is respect. Whatever is looked at
fetters by secret forces of attraction, overpowers, by the spell
which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance of that
Will which seeks only to subject all things to itself. What
ever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on the rea
son, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egoistic Will : it
reacts, it presents resistance. That which devastating egoism
devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.

The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers con
cerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies
nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality.*
The heathens were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature ;
they did nothing else than what the profoundly Christian
nations do at this day, when they make nature an object of
their admiration, of their indefatigable investigation. " But
the heathens actually worshipped natural objects." Certainly ;
for worship is only the childish, the religious form of contem
plation. Contemplation and worship are not essentially dis
tinguished. That which I contemplate I humble myself before,
I consecrate to it my noblest possession, my heart, my intel
ligence, as an offering. The natural philosopher also falls on
his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches
from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it
in the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal existence
in the memory of scientific humanity. The study of Nature is
the worship of Nature idolatry in the sense of the Israeli tish
and Christian God ; and idolatry is simply man's primitive
contemplation of nature ; for religion is nothing else than man's
primitive and therefore childish, popular, but prejudiced, un-
emancipated consciousness of himself and of Nature. The
Hebrews, on the other hand, raised themselves from the wor
ship of idols to the worship of God, from the creature to the
Creator; i. e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view of
Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely practical
view which subjects Nature only to the ends of egoism. " And
lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest
the sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,

* It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were various.
(See e. g. Aristoteles de Coelo, 1. i. c. 10.) But their difference is a subordi
nate one, since the creative agency itself is with them a more or less cosmical
being.

116 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

sliouldst be driven to worship them and serve them, which the
Lord thy God hath divided unto \i. e., bestowed upon, largitus
est] all nations under the whole heaven."* Thus, the creation
out of nothing, i. e., the creation as a purely imperious act, had
its origin only in the unfathomable depth of Hebrew egoism.

On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no object
of philosophy ; at least in any other way than it is so here ;
for it cuts away the root of all true speculation, presents no
grappling-point to thought, to theory ; theoretically considered,
it is a baseless air-built doctrine, which originated solely in the
need to give a warrant to utilism, to egoism, which contains
and expresses nothing but the command to make Nature
not an object of thought, of contemplation, but an object
of utilization. The more empty it is, however, for natural
philosophy, the more profound is its " speculative" significance;
for just because it has no theoretic fulcrum, it allows to the
speculatist infinite room for the play of arbitrary, groundless
interpretation.

It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the history
of states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions, continue to
drag out their existence long after they have lost their true
meaning. What has once existed will not be denied the right
to exist for ever ; what was once good, claims to be good for
all times. At this period of superannuation come the inter
preters, the speculatists, and talk of the profound sense, because
they no longer know the true one.f Thus, religious specula
tion deals with the dogmas, torn from the connexion in which
alone they have any true meaning ; instead of tracing them
back critically to their true origin, it makes the secondary
primitive, and the primitive secondary. To it God is the first;
man the second. Thus it inverts the natural order of things !
In reality, the first is man, the second the nature of man made
objective, namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion is

* Deut. iv. 19. " Licet enim ea, quse sunt in coelo, non sint liominum ar-
tificia, at hominum tamen gratia condita fuerunt. Ne quis igitur solem
adoret, sed soils effectorem desideret." Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes).

f But of course they only do this in the case of the " absolute religion;"
for with regard to other religions they hold up the ideas and customs which
are foreign to us, and of which we do not know the original meaning and
purpose, as senseless and ludicrous. And yet, in fact, to worship the urine
of cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink that they may obtain
forgiveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than to worship the comb or a
shred of the garment of the Mother of God.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 117

already become flesh and blood, can it be said as God is, so is
man : although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to any
thing more than tautology. But in the origin of religion it is
otherwise; and it is only in the origin of a thing that we can
discern its true nature. Man first unconsciously and involun
tarily creates God in his own image, and after this God con
sciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image. This
is especially confirmed by the development of the Israelitish
religion. Hence the position of theological one-sidedness, that
the revelation of God holds an even pace with the development
of the human race. Naturally ; for the revelation of God is
nothing else than the revelation, the self-unfolding of human
nature. The supranaturalistic egoism of the Jews did not
proceed from the Creator, but conversely, the latter from the
former ; in the creation the Israelite justified his egoism at
the bar of his reason.

It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply prac
tical grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a man,
withdraw himself from the theoretic contemplation and admi
ration of Nature. But in celebrating the power and greatness
of Nature, he celebrates only the power and greatness of Je
hovah. And the power of Jehovah has exhibited itself with
the most glory, in the miracles which it has wrought in favour
of Israel. Hence, in the celebration of this power the Israelite
has always reference ultimately to himself ; he extols the great
ness of Nature only for the same reason that the conqueror
magnifies the strength of his opponent, in order thereby to
heighten his own self-complacency, to make his own fame more
illustrious. Great and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has
created, but yet mightier, yet greater, is Israel's self- estimation.
For his sake the sun stands still ; for his sake, according to
Philo, the earth quaked at the delivery of the law ; in short,
for his sake all nature alters its course. "For the whole crea
ture in his proper kind, was fashioned again anew, serving the
peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that thy
children might be kept without hurt."* According to Philo,
God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all the
elements obeyed him as the Lord of Nature. t Israel's require
ment is the omnipotent law of the world, Israel's need the fate
of the universe. Jehovah is Israel's consciousness of the

* Wisd. xix. 6. f See Gfrorer's Philo.

118 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

sacredness and necessity of his own existence, a necessity
before which the existence of Nature, the existence of other
nations vanishes into nothing; Jehovah is the salus populi,
the salvation of Israel, to which everything that stands in its
way must he sacrificed ; Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical
arrogance, the annihilating flash of anger in the vindictive
glance of destroying Israel ; in a word, Jehovah is the ego of
Israel, which regards itself as the end and aim, the Lord of
Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature the Israelite celebrates
the power of Jehovah, and in the power of Jehovah the power
of his own self-consciousness. " Blessed he God ! God is our
help, God is our salvation." "Jehovah is my strength."
*' God himself hearkened to the word of Joshua, for Jehovah
himself fought for Israel." " Jehovah is a God of war."

If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded itself
in individual minds, and his love was extended, as by the
writer of the book of Jonah, to man in general, this does not
belong to the essential character of the Israelitish religion.
The God of the fathers, to whom the most precious recollec
tions are attached, the ancient historical God, remains always
the foundation of a religion.*

* We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power and
glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in Nature, is in
fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite, only admiration of the
power and glory of Nature. (See, on this subject, P. Sayle, Ein
Beitrag, Sfc., p. 25 29.) But to prove this formally lies out of our
plan, since we here confine ourselves to Christianity, i. e., the adoration of
God in man (Deum colimus per Christum. Tertullian. Apolog. c, 21).
Nevertheless, the principle of this proof is stated in the present work.

THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 119

CHAPTER XII.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OK THE MYSTERY
OF PEAYEE.

ISRAEL is the historical definition of the specific nature of the
religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness
was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, a national in
terest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we
have the Christian religion. Judaism is worldly Christianity;
Christianity, spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is the
Jewish religion purified from national egoism, and yet at the
same time it is certainly another, a new religion; for every
reformation, every purification, produces especially in religious
matters, where even the trivial becomes important an essen
tial change. To the Jew, the Israelite was the mediator, the
bond between God and man ; in his relation to Jehovah he
relied on his character of Israelite ; Jehovah himself was
nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel made
objective as the absolute being, the national conscience,
the universal law, the central point of the political system. *
If we let fall the limits of nationality, we obtain instead of
the Israelite man. As in Jehovah the Israelite personified
his national existence, so in God the Christian personified his
subjective human nature, freed from the limits of nationality.
As Israel made the wants of his national existence the law of
the world, as, under the dominance of these wants, he deified
even his political vindictiveness : so the Christian made the
requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of
the world. The miracles of Christianity, which belong just as
essentially to its characterization, as the miracles of the Old
Testament to that of Judaism, have not the welfare of a nation
for their object, but the welfare of man : that is, indeed, only
of man considered as Christian; for Christianity, in contra-

* " The greater part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be only
spiritual, is political." Herder.

120 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

diction with the genuine universal human heart, recognised
man only under the condition, the limitation, of belief in
Christ. But this fatal limitation will be discussed further
on. Christianity has spiritualised the egoism of Judaism into
subjectivity (though even within Christianity this subjectivity
is again expressed as pure egoism), has changed the desire for
earthly happiness, the goal of the Israelitish religion, into the
longing for heavenly bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.

The highest idea, the God of a political community, of a
people whose political system expresses itself in the form of
religion, is Law, the consciousness of the law as an abso
lute divine power; the highest idea, the God of unpolitical,
unworldly feeling is Love ; the love which brings all the
treasures and glories in heaven and upon earth as an offering
to the beloved, the love whose law is the wish of the beloved
one, and whose power is the unlimited power of the imagination,
of intellectual miracle-working.

God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional
wants; he is himself the realized wish of the heart, the
wish exalted to the certainty of its fulfilment, of its reality,
to that undoubting certainty before which no contradiction of
the understanding, no difficulty of experience or of the ex
ternal world maintains its ground. Certainty is the highest
power for man ; that which is certain to him is the essential,
the divine. " God is love : " this, the supreme dictum of Chris
tianity, only expresses the certainty which human feeling has
of itself, as the alone essential, i.e., absolute divine power,
the certainty that the inmost wishes of the heart have objective
validity and reality, that there are 110 limits, no positive
obstacles to human feeling, that the whole world, with all its
pomp and glory, is nothing weighed against human feeling.
God is love: that is, feeling is the God of man, nay, God
absolutely, the Absolute Being. God is the nature of human
feeling, unlimited, pure feeling, made objective. God is the
optative of the human heart transformed into the tempus
finitum,tlie certain, blissful "is," the unrestricted omnipotence
of feeling, prayer hearing itself, feeling perceiving itself, the
echo of our cry of anguish. Pain must give itself utterance ;
involuntarily the artist seizes the lute, that he may breathe out
his sufferings in its tones. He soothes his sorrow by making
it audible to himself, by making it objective ; he lightens the
burden which weighs upon his heart, by communicating

THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 121

it to the air, by making his sorrow a general existence. But
nature listens not to the plaints of man, it is callous to his
sorrows. Hence man turns away from Nature, from all visible
objects. He turns within, that here, sheltered and hidden
from the inexorable powers, he may find audience for his
griefs. Here he utters his oppressive secrets ; here he gives
vent to his stifled sighs. This open-air of the heart, this
outspoken secret, this uttered sorrow of the soul, is God.
God is a tear of love, shed in the deepest concealment, over
human misery. " God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the
depths of the heart;"* this saying is the most remarkable,
the profoundest, truest expression of Christian mysticism.

The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the simplest
act of religion prayer ; an act which implies at least as much
as the dogma of the Incarnation, although religious specula
tion stands amazed at this, as the greatest of mysteries. Not,
certainly, the prayer before and after meals, the ritual of
animal egoism, but the prayer pregnant with sorrow, the prayer
of disconsolate love, the prayer which expresses the power of
the heart that crushes man to the ground, the prayer which
begins in despair and ends in rapture.

In prayer, man addresses God with the word of intimate
affection Thou ; he thus declares articulately that God is
his alter ego; he confesses to God as the being nearest to him,
his most secret thoughts, his deepest wishes, which otherwise
he shrinks from uttering. But he expresses these wishes in
the confidence, in the certainty that they will be fulfilled.
How could he apply to a being that had no ear for his com
plaints ? Thus what is prayer but the wish of the heart
expressed with confidence in its fulfilment ? f what else is the

* Sebastian Frank vonWord in Zinkgrefs Apophthegm ata deutscher Nation.

f It would be an imbecile objection, to say that God fulfils only those
wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in the interest of
the church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which are accordant with
his will; for the will of God is the will of man, or rather God has the
power, man the will : God makes men happy, but man wills that he may
be happy. A particular wish may not be granted ; but that is of no con
sequence, if only the species, the essential tendency is accepted. The pious
soul whose pra} r er has failed, consoles himself, therefore, by thinking that its
fulfilment would not have been salutary for him. " Nullo igitur modo vota
aut preces sunt irritse aut infrugiferse et recte dicitur, in petitione rerum
corporalium aliquando Deum exaudire nos, non ad voluntatem nostram,
sed ad salutem." Oratio de Precatione, in Declamat. Melancthonis, T. iii.

G

122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

being that fulfils these wishes but human affection, the human
soul, giving ear to itself, approving itself, unhesitatingly affirm
ing itself ? The man who does not exclude from his mind the
idea of the world, the idea that everything here must be sought
intermediately, that every effect has its natural cause, that a
wish is only to be attained when it is made an end and the
corresponding means are put into operation such a man does
not pray : he only works ; he transforms his attainable wishes
into objects of real activity; other wishes which he recognises
as purely subjective, he denies, or regards as simply subjective,
pious aspirations. In other words, he limits, he conditionates his
being by the world, as a member of which he conceives him
self; he bounds his wishes by the idea of necessity. In prayer,
on the contrary, man excludes from his mind the world, and
with it all thoughts of intermediateness and dependence ; he
makes his wishes the concerns of his heart, objects of the
independent, omnipotent, absolute being, i.e., he affirms them
without limitation. God is the affirmation* of human feeling ;
prayer is the unconditional confidence of human feeling in
the absolute identity of the subjective and objective, the
certainty that the power of the heart is greater than the power
of Nature, that the heart's need is absolute necessity, the Fate
of the world. Prayer alters the course of Nature ; it determines
God to bring forth an effect in contradiction with the laws of
Nature. Prayer is the absolute relation of the human heart to
itself, to its own nature; in prayer, man forgets that there
exists a limit to his wishes, and is happy in this forgetfulness.

Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, a dialogue
of man with himself, with his heart. It is essential to the
effectiveness of prayer that it be audibly, intelligibly, energeti
cally expressed. Involuntarily prayer wells forth in sound ;
the struggling heart bursts the barrier of the closed lips. But
audible prayer is only prayer revealing its nature ; prayer is
virtually, if not actually, speech, the Latin word oratio sig
nifies both ; in prayer, man speaks undisguisedly of that which
weighs upon him, which affects him closely; he makes his
heart objective; hence the moral power of prayer. Concen
tration, it is said, is the condition of prayer : but it is more
than a condition ; prayer is itself concentration, the dismissal
of all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from with-

* Ja-wort.

THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 123

out, retirement within oneself, in order to have relation only
with one's own being. Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent
prayer is said to help ; but this help lies in the prayer itself.
As everywhere in religion the subjective, the secondary, the con-
ditionating, is theprima causa, the objective fact ; so here, these
subjective qualities are the objective nature of prayer itself.*

It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it as
an expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly ex
presses such a sense, but the dependence is that of man on his
own heart, on his own feeling. He who feels himself only
dependent, does not open his mouth in prayer; the sense of
dependence robs him of the desire, the courage for it ; for the
sense of dependence is the sense of need. Prayer has its root
rather in the unconditional trust of the heart, untroubled by
all thought of compulsive need, that its concerns are objects
of the absolute Being, that the almighty, infinite nature of
the Father of men, is a sympathetic, tender, loving nature, and
that thus the dearest, most sacred emotions of man are divine
realities. But the child does not feel itself dependent on the
father as a father ; rather, he has in the father the feeling of
his own strength, the consciousness of his own worth, the
guarantee of his existence, the certainty of the fulfilment of
his wishes ; on the father rests the burden of care ; the child,
on the contrary, lives careless and happy in reliance on the
father, his visible guardian spirit, who desires nothing but the
child's welfare and happiness. The father makes the child an
end, and himself the means of its existence. The child, in
asking something of its father, does not apply to him as a
being distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but
it applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and determined
by his paternal feeling, his love for his child. f The entreaty is

* Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual than
isolated prayer. Community enhances the force of emotion, heightens
confidence. What we are unable to do alone, we are able to do with others.
The sense of solitude is the sense of limitation : the sense of community is
the sense of freedom. Hence it is that men, when threatened hy the de
structive powers of nature, crowd together. " Multorum preces impossibile

est,utnonimpetrent, inquit Ambrosius Sanctse orationis fervor quanto

inter plures collectior tanto ardet diutius ac intensius cor divinum penetrat

Negatur singularitati, quod conceditur charitati." Sacra Hist,

de Gentis Hebr. ortu. P. Paul. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1700, pp. 668, 669.

f In the excellent work, Theanthropos, eine Reihe von Aphorismen
(Zurich, 1838), the idea of the sense of dependence, of omnipotence, of
prayer, and of love, is admirably developed.

G 2

124 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

only an expression of the force which the child exercises over
the father ; if, indeed, the word force is appropriate here, since
the force of the child is nothing more than the force of the
father's own heart. Speech has the same form hoth for entreaty
and command, namely, the imperative. And the imperative
of love has infinitely more power than that of despotism.
Love does not command ; love needs hut gently to intimate
its wishes, to be certain of their fulfilment ; the despot must
throw compulsion even into the tones of his voice in order to
make other beings, in themselves uncaring for him, the execu
tors of his wishes. The imperative of love works with electro
magnetic power; that of despotism with the mechanical power of
a wooden telegraph. The most intimate epithet of God in prayer
is the word "Father," the most intimate, because in it man
is in relation to the absolute nature as to his own ; the word
Father is the expression of the closest, the most intense identity,
the expression in which lies the pledge that my wishes will
"be fulfilled, the guarantee of my salvation. The omnipotence
to which man turns in prayer is nothing but the Omnipotence
of Goodness, which, for the sake of the salvation of man,
makes the impossible possible; is, in truth, nothing else than
the omnipotence of the heart, of feeling, which breaks through
all the limits of the understanding, which soars above all the
boundaries of Nature, which wills that there be nothing else than
feeling, nothing that contradicts the heart. Faith in omnipo
tence is faith in the unreality of the external world, of objec
tivity, faith in the absolute reality of man's emotional nature :
the essence of omnipotence is simply the essence of feeling.
Omnipotence is the power before which no law, no external
condition, avails or subsists ; but this power is the emo
tional nature, which feels every determination, every law, to be
a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses it. Omni
potence does nothing more than accomplish the will of the
feelings. In prayer man turns to the Omnipotence of Good
ness- which simply means, that in prayer man adores his
own heart, regards his own feelings as absolute.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 125

CHAPTER XIII.
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.

FAITH in the power of prayer and only where a power, an
objective power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious
t ru th, is identical with faith in miraculous power; and
faith in miracles is identical with the essence of faith in
general. Faith alone prays ; the prayer of faith is alone
effectual. But faith is nothing else than confidence in the
reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or
laws of nature and reason, that is, of natural reason. The
specific object of faith therefore is miracle; faith is the belief
in miracle ; faith and miracle are absolutely inseparable. That
which is objectively miracle, or miraculous power, is subjec
tively faith ; miracle is the outward aspect of faith, faith the
inward soul of miracle ; faith is the miracle of mind, the miracle
of feeling, which merely becomes objective in external miracles.
To faith nothing is impossible, and miracle only gives actuality
to this omnipotence of faith : miracles are but a visible ex
ample of what faith can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness,
exaltation of feeling, transcendence is therefore the essence
of faith. Faith has reference only to things which, in con
tradiction with the limits or laws of Nature and reason,
give objective reality to human feelings and human desires.
Faith unfetters the wishes of subjectivity from the bonds of
natural reason ; it confers what nature and reason deny ; hence
it makes man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes.
And true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only
where I go out of myself, overstep the bounds of my personality,
concede reality and a right of suffrage to that which is distinct
from myself; where I know myself to be a subjective, i.e., a
limited being, and seek to widen my limits by admitting things
external to myself. But in faith the very principle of doubt is
annulled; for to faith the subjective is in and by itself the
objective nay, the absolute. Faith is nothing else than belief
in the absolute reality of subjectivity.

126 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

"Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good
to God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its reliance
on God alone, is enjoined by God in the first commandment,

where he says, I am the Lord thy God That is, I alone

will he thy God, thou shalt seek no other God ; I will help
thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not think that I am an
enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou thinkest
so, thou makest me in thine heart into another God than I
am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I am willing to be
merciful to thee." " As thou behavest thyself, so does God
behave. If thou thinkest that he is angry with thee, He is
angry; if thou thinkest that He is unmerciful, and will cast
thee into hell, He is so. As thou believest of God, so is
He to thee." " If thou believest it, thou hast it ; but if thou
believest not, thou hast none of it." " Therefore, as we be
lieve, so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God,
He will not be our devil. But if we regard him not as our
God, then truly he is not our God, but must be a consuming
fire." "By unbelief we make God a devil."* Thus, if I believe in
a God, I have a God, i.e., faith in God is the God of man. If
God is such, whatever it may be, as I believe Him, what else is
the nature of God than the nature of faith ? Is it possible for
thee to believe in a God who regards thee favourably, if thou
dost not regard thyself favourably, if thou despairest of man,
if he is nothing to thee ? What else then is the being of God
but the being of man, the absolute self-love of man ? If thou
believest that God is for thee, thou believest that nothing is or
can be against thee, that nothing contradicts thee. But if
thou believest that nothing is or can be against thee, thou be
lievest what ? nothing less than that thou art God.f That
God is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In
declaring that God is for thee, thou declares! that he is thy
own being. What then is faith but the infinite self- certainty
of man, the undoubting certainty that his own subjective being
is the objective, absolute being, the being of beings?

* Luther (T. xv. p. 282. T. xvi. pp. 491493).
f " God is Almig"

jhty; but he who believes, is a God." Luther
(in Chr. Kapps Christus u. die Weltgesckichte, s. 11). In another place
Luther calls faith the "Creator of the Godhead;" it is true that he
immediately adds, as he must necessarily do on his stand-point, the
following limitation : " Not that it creates anything in the divine, eternal
Being, but that it creates that Being in us." (T. xi. p. 161.)

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 127

Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe,
a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless
subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has
already sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation of
the world in an immediately approaching, a mentally present
annihilation of this world, a world antagonistic to the wishes
of the Christian, is therefore a phenomenon belonging to the
inmost essence of Christianity ; a faith which is not properly
separable from the other elements of Christian belief, and with
the renunciation of which, true, positive Christianity is
renounced and denied.* The essence of faith, as may be
confirmed by an examination of its objects down to the
minutest speciality, is the idea that that which man wishes
actually is : he wishes to be immortal, therefore he is
immortal ; he wishes for the existence of a being who can
do everything which is impossible to Nature and reason,
therefore such a being exists ; he wishes for a world which
corresponds to the desires of the heart, a world of unlimited
subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling, of uninterrupted bliss,
while nevertheless there exists a world the opposite of that
subjective one, and hence this world must pass away,
as necessarily pass away as God, or absolute subjectivity,
must remain. Faith, love, hope, are the Christian Trinity.
Hope has relation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes
which are not yet fulfilled, but which are to be fulfilled ; love
has relation to the Being who gives and fulfils these promises ;
faith to the promises, the wishes, which are already fulfilled,
which are historical facts.

Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential

* This belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the biblical
writers can scarcely be understood. The passage, 2 Pet. iii. 8, as is
evident from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing in opposition to
an immediate destruction of the world ; for though with the Lord a thou
sand years are as one day, yet at the same time one day is as a thousand
years, and therefore the world may, even by to-morrow, no longer exist.
That in the Bible a very near end of the world is expected and prophesied,
although the day and hour are not determined, only falsehood or blindness
can deny. See on this subject Lutzelberger. Hence religious Christians,
in almost all times, have believed that the destruction of the world is near
at hand Luther, for example, often says that " the last day is not far off,"
(e. g. T. xvi. p. 26) ; or at least their souls have longed for the end of
the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether it be near
or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Sseculi ad Hesychium, c. 13).

128 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

article of faith. But what is miracle ? A supranaturalistic
wish realized nothing more. The apostle Paul illustrates the
nature of Christian faith by the example of Abraham. Abraham
could not, in a natural way, ever hope for posterity ; Jehovah
nevertheless promised it to him out of special favour ; and
Abraham believed in spite of Nature. Hence this faith was
reckoned to him as righteousness, as merit ; for it implies
great force of subjectivity to accept as certain something in
contradiction with experience, at least with rational, normal
experience. But what was the object of this divine promise ?
Posterity : the object of a human wish. And in what did
Abraham believe when he believed in Jehovah ? In a Being
who can do everything, and can fulfil all wishes. " Is any
thing too hard for the Lord ?"*

But why do we go so far back as to Abraham ? We have
the most striking examples much nearer to us. Miracle feeds the
hungry, cures men born blind, deaf, and lame, rescues from
fatal diseases, and even raises the dead at the prayer of rela
tives. Thus it satisfies human wishes, and wishes which,
though not always intrinsically like the wish for the restoration
of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal to miraculous power,
to miraculous aid, are transcendental, supranaturalistic. But
miracle is distinguished from that mode of satisfying human
wishes and needs which is in accordance with Nature and
reason, in this respect, that it satisfies the wishes of men in a
way corresponding to the nature of wishes in the most desir
able way. Wishes own no restraint, no law, no time ; they
would be fulfilled without delay on the instant. And behold !
miracle is as rapid as a wish is impatient. Miraculous power
realizes human wishes in a moment, at one stroke, without any
hindrance. That the sick should become well is no miracle ;
but that they should become so immediately, at a mere word of
command, that is the mystery of miracle. Thus it is not in
its product or object that miraculous agency is distinguished
from the agency of nature and reason, but only in its mode
and process ; for if miraculous power were to effect something
absolutely new, never before beheld, never conceived, or not
even conceivable, it would be practically proved to be an essen
tially different, and at the same time objective agency. But the

* Gen. xviii. 14.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 129

agency which in essence, in substance, is natural and accord
ant with the forms of the senses, and which is supernatural,
supersensual, only in the mode or process, is the agency of
the imagination. The power of miracle is therefore nothing
else than the power of the imagination.

Miraculous agency, is agency directed to an end. The
yearning after the departed Lazarus, the desire of his relatives
to possess him again, was the motive of the miraculous resus
citation; the satisfaction of this wish, the end. It is true that
the miracle happened " for the glory of God, that the Son of
God might he glorified thereby ; " but the message sent to the
Master by the sisters of Lazarus, "Behold, he whom thou
lovest, is sick," and the tears which Jesus shed, vindicate for
the miracle a human origin and end. The meaning is : to that
power which can awaken the dead, no human wish is impossible
to accomplish.* And the glory of the Son consists in this : that
he is acknowledged and reverenced as the being who is able to
do what man is unable, but wishes to do. Activity towards an
end, is well known to describe a circle : in the end it returns
upon its beginning. But miraculous agency is distinguished
from the ordinary realization of an object, in that it realizes the
end without means, that it effects an immediate identity of the
wish and its fulfilment ; that consequently it describes a circle,
not in a curved, but in a straight line, that is, the shortest line.
A circle in a straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle.
The attempt to construct a circle with a straight line, would
not be more ridiculous than the attempt to deduce miracle
philosophically. To reason, miracle is absurd, inconceivable ;
as inconceivable as wooden iron, or a circle without a periphery.
Before it is discussed whether a miracle can happen, let it be
shown that miracle, i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable.

* " To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but to the Lord

Christ, not only is it not impossible, but it is no trouble or labour to him.

.... This Christ did as a witness and a sign, that he can and will raise

from death. He does it not at all times and to every one It is

enough that he has done it a few times ; the rest he leaves to the last day."
Luther (T. xvi. p. 518). The positive, essential significance of miracle
is therefore that the divine nature is the human nature. Miracles con
firm, authenticate doctrine. What doctrine ? Simply this, that God is a
Saviour of men, their Redeemer out of all trouble, i. e., a being corre
sponding to the wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being.
What the God-man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad oculos by
deeds.

G3

130 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceivable
is, that miracle is represented as an event perceptible by the
senses, and hence man cheats his reason by material images
which screen the contradiction. The miracle of the turning of
water into wine, for example, implies in fact nothing else than
that water is wine, nothing else than that two absolutely con
tradictory predicates or subjects are identical ; for in the hand
of the miracle-worker there is no distinction between the two
substances ; the transformation is only the visible appearance
of this identity of two contradictories. But the transformation
conceals the contradiction, because the natural conception of
change is interposed. Here, however, is no gradual, no natural,
or, so to speak, organic change ; but an absolute, immaterial
one; a pure creatio ex nihilo. In the mysterious and mo
mentous act of miraculous power, in the act which constitutes
the miracle, water is suddenly and imperceptibly wine : which
is equivalent to saying that iron is wood, or wooden iron.

The miraculous act and miracle is only a transient act is
therefore not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very
principle of thought; but it is just as little an object of sense,
an object of real or even possible experience. Water is indeed
an object of sense, and wine also; I first see water, and then
wine; but the miracle itself, that which makes this water
suddenly wine, this, not being a natural process, but a pure
perfect without any antecedent imperfect, without any modus,
without way or means, is no object of real, or even of possible
experience. Miracle is a thing of the imagination ; and on that
very account is it so agreeable : for the imagination is the
faculty which alone corresponds to personal feeling, because it
sets aside all limits, all laws which are painful to the feelings,
and thus makes objective to man the immediate, absolutely
unlimited satisfaction of his subjective wishes.* Accordance
with subjective inclination, is the essential characteristic of
miracle. It is true that miracle produces also an awful,
agitating impression, so far as it expresses a power which
nothing can resist, the power of the imagination. But this
impression lies only in the transient miraculous act; the abiding,

* This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united to religion,
to faith in God : a remark which however is so obvious as to be super
fluous. But this limitation is in fact no limitation, for God himself is
unlimited, absolutely satisfied, self-contented human feeling.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 131

essential impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in
which the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding rela
tives and friends are awe-struck at the extraordinary, almighty
power which transforms the dead into the living ; but soon the
relatives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead him with
tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate a festival of rejoicing.
Miracle springs out of feeling, and has its end in feeling.
Even in the traditional representation it does not deny its origin ;
the representation which gratifies the feelings is alone the ade
quate one. Who can fail to recognise in the narrative of the
resurrection of Lazarus, the tender, pleasing, legendary tone?*
Miracle is agreeable, because, as has been said, it satisfies the
wishes of man without labour, without effort. Labour is unim-
passioned, unbelieving, rationalistic ; for man here makes his
existence dependent on activity directed to an end, which acti
vity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective
world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about the
objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it is
happy in itself. The element of culture, the northern principle
of self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional nature. The
Apostles and Evangelists were no scientifically cultivated men.
Culture, in general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the
individual above his subjectivity to objective universal ideas, to
the contemplation of the world. The Apostles were men of the
people ; the people live only in themselves, in their feelings :
therefore Christianity took possession of the people. Vox
populi vox Dei. Did Christianity conquer a single philosopher,
historian, or poet, of the classical period ? The philosophers
who went over to Christianity were feeble, contemptible philo
sophers. All who had yet the classic spirit in them were
hostile, or at least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of
culture was identical with the victory of Christianity. The
classic spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws, not
indeed by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true and valid
ones ; it is determined by the necessity, the truth of the nature
of things ; in a word, it is the objective spirit. In place of this,

* The legends of Catholicism of course only the best, the really
pleasing ones are, as it were, only the echo of the key-note which
predominates in this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly
defined as religious humour. Catholicism especially has developed miracle
on this its humorous side.

132 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

there entered with Christianity the principle of unlimited,
extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic subjectivity ; a prin
ciple intrinsically opposed to that of science, of culture.* With
Christianity man lost the capability of conceiving himself as a
part of Nature, of the universe. As long as true, unfeigned, un-
falsified, uncompromising Christianity existed, as long as Chris
tianity was a living, practical truth, so long did real miracles
happen ; and they necessarily happened, for faith in dead,
historical, past miracles is itself a dead faith, the first step
towards unbelief, or rather the first and therefore the timid,
uncandid, servile mode in which unbelief in miracle finds vent.
But where miracles happen, all definite forms melt in the golden
haze of imagination and feeling ; there the world, reality, is no
truth; there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective
being, is held to be alone the objective, real being.

To the merely emotional man the imagination is immediately,
without his willing or knowing it, the highest, the dominant
activity ; and being the highest, it is the activity of God, the
creative activity. To him feeling is an immediate truth and
reality ; he cannot abstract himself from his feelings, he cannot
get beyond them : and equally real is his imagination. The
imagination is not to him what it is to us men of active under
standing, who distinguish it as subjective from objective cog
nition; it is immediately identical with himself, with his
feelings, and since it is identical with his being, it is his
essential, objective, necessary view of things. For us, indeed,
imagination is an arbitrary activity ; but where man has not
imbibed the principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and
moves only in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate,
involuntary activity.

The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination is
regarded by many in the present day as superficial. But let
any one transport himself to the time when living, present
miracles were believed in ; when the reality of things without
us was as yet no sacred article of faith ; when men were so
void of any theoretic interest in the world, that they from day

* Culture in the sense in which it is here taken. It is highly charac
teristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions, that the only
language in which the Divine Spirit was and is held to reveal himself in
Christianity, is not the language of a Sophocles or a Plato, of art and
philosophy, but the vague, unformed, crudely emotional language of the

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 183

to day looked forward to its destruction ; when they lived only
in the rapturous prospect and hope of heaven, that is, in the
imagination of it (for whatever heaven may he, for them, so
long as they were on earth, it existed only in the imagination) ;
when this imagination was not a fiction hut a truth, nay, the
eternal, alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of conso
lation, but a practical moral principle determining actions, a
principle to which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real
world with all its glories; let him transport himself to
those times and he must himself be very superficial to pro
nounce the psychological genesis of miracles superficial.
It is no valid objection that miracles have happened, or are
supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole as
semblies : no man was independent, all were filled with exalted
supranaturalistic ideas and feelings ; all were animated by the
same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations. And who
does not know that there are common or similar dreams, common
or similar visions, especially among impassioned individuals
who are closely united and restricted to their own circle ? But
be that as it may. If the explanation of miracles by feeling
and imagination is superficial, the charge of superficiality falls
not on the explainer but on that which he explains, namely,
on miracle ; for, seen in clear daylight, miracle presents abso
lutely nothing else than the sorcery of the imagination, which
satisfies without contradiction all the wishes of the heart.*

* Many miracles may really have had originally a physical or physiolo
gical phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here considering only
the religious significance and genesis of miracle.

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTEE XIV.

THE MYSTEEY OF THE RESUKRECTION AND OF THE
MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.

THE quality of being agreeable to subjective inclination belongs
not only to practical miracles, in which it is conspicuous, as
they have immediate reference to the interest or wish of the
human individual ; it belongs also to theoretical, or more pro
perly dogmatic miracles, and hence to the Kesurrection and
the Miraculous Conception.

Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the wish
not to die. This wish is originally identical with the instinct
of self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to maintain itself,
to continue alive, and consequently not to die. Subsequently,
when reflection and feeling are developed under the urgency of
life, especially of social and political life, this primary negative
wish becomes the positive wish for a life, and that a better life,
after death. But this wish involves the further wish for the
certainty of its fulfilment. Reason can afford no such certainty.
It has therefore been said that all proofs of immortality are
insufficient, and even that unassisted reason is not capable of
apprehending it, still less of proving it. And with justice ; for
reason furnishes only general proofs ; it cannot give the cer
tainty of any personal immortality, and it is precisely this
certainty which is desired. Such a certainty requires an im
mediate personal assurance, a practical demonstration. This
can only be given to me by the fact of a dead person, whose
death has been previously certified, rising again from the grave ;
and he must be no indifferent person, but on the contrary the
type and representative of all others, so that his resurrection
also may be the type, the guarantee of theirs. The resurrec
tion of Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an
immediate certainty of his personal existence after death,
personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact.

Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a question in

THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. IS 5

which the personal interest was only a collateral point. They
concerned themselves chiefly with the nature of the soul, of
mind, of the vital principle. The immortality of the vital prin
ciple by no means involves the idea, not to mention the
certainty, of personal immortality. Hence the vagueness,
discrepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients express
themselves on this subject. The Christians, on the contrary,
in the undoubting certainty that their personal, self-flattering
wishes will be fulfilled, i.e., in the certainty of the divine nature
of their emotions, the truth and unassailableness of their sub
jective feelings, converted that which to the ancients was a
theoretic problem, into an immediate fact, converted a theo
retic, and in itself open question, into a matter of conscience,
the denial of which was equivalent to the high treason of
atheism. He who denies the resurrection denies the resurrec
tion of Christ, but he who denies the resurrection of Christ
denies Christ himself, and he who denies Christ denies God.
Thus did " spiritual" Christianity unspiritualize what was
spiritual ! To the Christians the immortality of the reason, of
the soul, was far too abstract and negative ; they had at heart
only a personal immortality, such as would gratify their feel
ings ; and the guarantee of this lies in a bodily resurrection
alone. The resurrection of the body is the highest triumph of
Christianity over the sublime, but certainly abstract spirituality
and objectivity of the ancients. For this reason the idea of the
resurrection could never be assimilated by the pagan mind.

As the Resurrection, which terminates the sacred history,
(to the Christian not a mere history, but the truth itself,)
is a realized wish, so also is that which commences it, namely,
the Miraculous Conception, though this has relation not so
much to an immediately personal interest as to a particular
subjective feeling.

The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more sub
jective, i.e., supranatural, or antinatural, is his view of things,
the greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least of those na
tural objects and processes which displease his imagination,
which affect him disagreeably.* The free, objective man

* " If Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known of
the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have been in
all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man . . . . ; no thorns, or
thistles, or diseases .... j his brow would not have been wrinkled ; no foot, or

136 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

doubtless finds things repugnant and distasteful in Nature, but
he regards them as natural, inevitable results, and under this
conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely subjective and
untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective man, who lives
only in the feelings and imagination, regards these things
with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye of that unhappy
foundling, who even in looking at the loveliest flower could pay
attention only to the little " black beetle," which crawled over
it, and who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment
in the sight of flowers always embittered. Moreover, the subjec
tive man makes his feelings the measure, the standard of what
ought to be. That which does not please him, which offends
his transcendental, supranatural, or antinatural feelings, ought
not to be. Even if that which pleases him cannot exist with
out being associated with that which displeases him, the sub
jective man is not guided by the wearisome laws of logic and
physics but by the self-will of the imagination ; hence he drops
what is disagreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone what is
agreeable. Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases him;
still he is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only
of the Mother who already carries the infant on her arms.

Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the
cornu copies of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his
personified sense of honour and of shame before common
nature.* Nevertheless, there stirs in his bosom a natural
feeling also, the compassionate feeling which makes the Mother

hand, or other member of the body would have been feeble or infirm." " But
now, since the Fall, we all know and feel what a fury lurks in our flesh,
which not only burns and rages with lust and desire, but also loathes, when
once "* obtained, the very thing it has desired. But this is the fault of
original sin, which has polluted all creatures ; wherefore I believe that
before the Fall the sun was much brighter, water much clearer, and the
land much richer, and fuller of all sorts of plants." Luther (T. i. s. 322,
323, 329, 337).

* " Tantum denique abest incesti cupido, ut nonnullis rubori sit etiam
pudica conjunctio." M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extraordi
narily chaste that he had never seen a woman's face, nay, he dreaded even
touching himself, "se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo horrebat."
Another Father had so fine an olfactory sense in this matter, that on the
approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable odour.
Bayle (Diet. Art. Mariana Rem. C.). But the supreme, the divine

Srinciple of this hyperphysical delicacy, is the Virgin Mary; hence the
atholics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis corona, Virginitatis
typus et forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Virginitatis magistra,
Virginum prima, Virginitatis primiceria.

THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 137

beloved. What then is to be done in this difficulty of the
heart, in this conflict between a natural and a supranatural
feeling ? The supranaturalist must unite the two, must com
prise in one and the same subject two predicates which exclude
each other.* what a plenitude of agreeable, sweet, super-
sensual, sensual emotions lies in this combination ?

Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catholicism,
that at the same time marriage is holy, and celibacy is holy.
This simply realizes, as a practical contradiction, the dogmatic
contradiction of the Virgin Mother. But this wondrous union
of virginity and maternity, contradicting nature and reason,
but in the highest degree accordant with the feelings and
imagination, is no product of Catholicism ; it lies already in
the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible, especially
in the view of the Apostle Paul. The supernatural conception
of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, a doctrine
which expresses its inmost dogmatic essence, and which rests
on the same foundation as all other miracles and articles
of faith. As death, which the philosopher, the man of
science, the free objective thinker in general, accepts as a
natural necessity, and as indeed all the limits of nature,
which are impediments to feeling, but to reason are rational laws,
were repugnant to the Christians, and were set aside by them
through the supposed agency of miraculous power ; so, neces
sarily, they had an equal repugnance to the natural process of
generation, and superseded it by miracle. The Miraculous
Conception is not less welcome than the Resurrection, to all
believers ; for it was the first step towards the purification of
mankind, polluted by sin and Nature. Only because the God-
man was not infected with original sin, could he, the pure one,
purify mankind in the eyes of God, to whom the natural
process of generation was an object of aversion, because he
himself is nothing else but supranatural feeling.

Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its
criticism, regarded the conception of the God-producing
Virgin, as a great, adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith,
transcending reason. f But with the Protestants, who confined

* " Salve sancta parens, enixa puerpera Kegem,
Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore."

Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132.

f See e. g. J. D. Winckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Brunsvigae, 1754, pp.
247254.

138 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the speciality of the Christian to the domain of faith, and with
whom, in life, it was allowable to he a man, even this mystery
had only a dogmatic, and no longer a practical significance ;
they did not allow it to interfere with their desire of marriage.
With the Catholics, and with all the old, uncompromising,
uncritical Christians, that which was a mystery of faith, was a
mystery of life, of morality.* Catholic morality is Christian,
mystical ; Protestant morality was, in its very beginning, ra
tionalistic. Protestant morality is, and was, a carnal mingling
of the Christian with the man, the natural, political, civil,
social man, or whatever else he may be called in distinction
from the Christian ; Catholic morality cherished in its heart
the mystery of the unspotted virginity. Catholic morality was
the Mater dolorosa ; Protestant morality a comely, fruitful
matron. Protestantism is from beginning to end the con
tradiction between faith and love ; for which very reason it has
been the source, or at least the condition, of freedom. Just
because the mystery of the Virgo Deipara had with the Pro
testants a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and no
longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible to
express oneself with sufficient care and reserve concerning it,
and that it ought not to be made an object of speculation.
That which is denied in practice has no true basis and dura
bility in man, is a mere spectre of the mind ; and hence it is
withdrawn from the investigation of the understanding. Ghosts
no not brook daylight.

Even the later doctrine, (which, however, had been already
enunciated in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejects it,) that
Mary herself was conceived without taint of original sin, is by
no means a " strange school-bred doctrine," as it is called by
a modern historian. That which gives birth to a miracle,
which brings forth God, must itself be of miraculous, divine
origin, or nature. How could Mary have had the honour of
being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, if she had not been
from the first pure ? Could the Holy Ghost take up his
abode in a body polluted by original sin ? If the principle of
Christianity, the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does not
appear strange to you, why think strange the naive, well-
meaning inferences of Catholicism ?

* See on this subject Pkilos. und Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 139

CHAPTER XV.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE
PERSONAL GOD.

THE fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realized wishes
of the heart ; the essence of Christianity is the essence of hu
man feeling. It is pleasanter to be passive than to act, to be
redeemed and made free by another than to free oneself; plea
santer to make one's salvation dependent on a person than on
the force of one's own spontaneity ; pleasanter to set before
oneself an object of love than an object of effort; pleasanter to
know oneself beloved by God than merely to have that simple,
natural self-love which is innate in all beings ; pleasanter to
see oneself imaged in the love-beaming eyes of another personal
being, than to look into the concave mirror of self, or into the
cold depths of the ocean of Nature ; pleasanter, in short, to
allow oneself to be acted on by one's own feeling as by another,
but yet fundamentally identical being, than to regulate oneself
by reason. Feeling is the oblique case of the ego, the ego in
the accusative. The ego of Fichte is destitute of feeling,
because the accusative is the same as the nominative, because
it is indeclinable. But feeling or sentiment is the ego acted
on by itself, and by itself as another being, the passive ego.
Feeling changes the active in man into the passive, and the
passive into the active. To feeling, that which thinks is the
thing thought, and the thing thought is that which thinks.
Feeling is the dream of Nature ; and there is nothing more
blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. But what is
dreaming ? The reversing of the waking consciousness. In
dreaming, the active is the passive, the passive the active ; in
dreaming, I take the spontaneous action of my own mind for
an action upon me from without, my emotions for events, my
conceptions and sensations for true existences apart from
myself. I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming is a double
refraction of the rays of light; hence its indescribable charm.
It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming as in waking ;

140 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the only distinction is, that in waking, the ego acts on itself;
whereas in dreaming, it is acted on by itself as by another being.
I think myself is a passionless, rationalistic position ; I am
thought by God, and think myself only as thought by God
is a position pregnant with feeling, religious. Feeling is a
dream with the eyes open ; religion the dream of waking con
sciousness : dreaming is the key to the mysteries of religion.

The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will and
deed, of wishing and reality. This law is fulfilled by the
Redeemer. As external miracles, in opposition to natural ac
tivity, realize immediately the physical wants and wishes of
man ; so the Redeemer, the Mediator, the God-man, in opposi
tion to the moral spontaneity of the natural or rationalistic
man, satisfies immediately the inward moral wants and wishes,
since he dispenses man on his own side from any intermediate
activity. What thou wishest is already effected. Thou desirest
to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the condition, the
means of happiness. But thou canst not fulfil this condition ;
that is, in truth, thou needest not. That which thou seekest to
do has already been done. Thou hast only to be passive, thou
needest only believe, only enjoy. Thou desirest to make God
favourable to thee, to appease his anger, to be at peace with thy
conscience. But this peace exists already ; this peace is the
Mediator, the God-man. He is thy appeased conscience ; he
is the fulfilment of the law, and therewith the fulfilment of thy
own wish and effort.

Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the law,
who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy life. He
who fulfils the law, annuls the law. The law has authority, has
validity, only in relation to him who violates it. But he who
perfectly fulfils the law, says to it : What thou wiliest I spon
taneously will, and what thou commandest I enforce by deeds ;
my life is the true, the living law. The fulfiller of the law,
therefore, necessarily steps into the place of the law ; moreover
he becomes a new law, one whose yoke is light and easy. For
in place of the merely imperative law, he presents himself as an
example, as an object of love, of admiration and emulation, and
thus becomes the Saviour from sin. The law does not give
me the power to fulfil the law; no ! it is hard and merciless;
it only commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil
it, or how I am to fulfil it ; it leaves me to myself, without
counsel or aid. But he who presents himself to me as an ex-

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST.

ample, lights up my path, takes me by the hand, and imparts
to me his own strength. The law lends no power of resisting
sin, hut example works miracles. The law is dead ; but ex
ample animates, inspires, carries men involuntarily along with
it. The law speaks only to the understanding, and sets itself
directly in opposition to the instincts ; example, on the con
trary, appeals to a powerful instinct immediately connected
with the activity of the senses, that of involuntary imitation.
Example operates on the feelings and imagination. In short,
example has magical, i. e., sense-affecting powers ; for the ma
gical or involuntary force of attraction, is an essential property
as of matter in general, so in particular of that which affects
the senses.

The ancients said, that if virtue could become visible, its
beauty would win and inspire all hearts. The Christians were
so happy as to see even this wish fulfilled The heathens had
an unwritten, the Jews a written law; the Christians had a
model a visible, personal, living law, a law made flesh. Hence
the joyfulness especially of the primitive Christians, hence the
glory of Christianity that it alone contains and bestows the
power to resist sin. And this glory is not to be denied it.
Only it is to be observed that the power of the exemplar of
virtue is not so much the power of virtue as the power of ex
ample in general, just as the power of religious music is not
the power of religion, but the power of music;* and that
therefore, though the image of virtue has virtuous actions as
its consequences, these actions are destitute of the dispositions
and motives of virtue. But this simple and true sense of the
redeeming and reconciling power of example in distinction
from the power of law, to which we have reduced the antithesis
of the law and Christ, by no means expresses the full religious
significance of the Christian redemption and reconciliation.
In this, everything reduces itself to the personal power of that
miraculous intermediate being who is neither God alone nor
man alone, but a man who is also God, and a God who is also

* In relation to this, the confession of Augustine is interesting. " Ita
fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis : magisque
adducor . . . cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblecta-
menta aurium innrmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat, Tamen cum
mihi accidit, ut nos amplius cantus, quam res quae canitur moveat,
prenaliter me peccare confiteor." Confess. 1. x. c. 33.

THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

man, and who can therefore only be comprehended in connec
tion with the significance of miracle. In this, the miraculous
Kedeemer is nothing else than the realized wish of feeling to
he free from the laws of morality, i.e., from the conditions to
which virtue is united in the natural course of things ; the
realized wish to he freed from moral evils instantaneously,
immediately, by a stroke of magic, that is, in an absolutely
subjective, agreeable way. " The word of God," says Luther,
for example, " accomplishes all things swiftly, brings forgive
ness of sins, and gives tliee eternal life, and costs nothing
more than that thou shouldst hear the word, and when thou
hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou believest, thou hast
it without pains, cost, delay, or difficulty."* But that hearing
of the word of God, which is followed by faith, is itself a " gift
of God." Thus faith is nothing else than a psychological
miracle, a supernatural operation of God in man, as Luther
likewise says. But man becomes free from sin and from the
consciousness of guilt only through faith, morality is depen
dent on faith, the virtues of the heathens are only splendid
sins; thus he becomes morally free and good only through
miracle.

That the idea of miraculous power is one with the idea of the
intermediate being, at once divine and human, has historical
proof in the fact that the miracles of the Old Testament, the
delivery of the law, Providence all the elements which
constitute the essence of religion, were in the later Judaism
attributed to the Logos. In Philo, however, this Logos still
hovers in the air between heaven and earth, now as abstract,
now as concrete ; that is, Philo vacillates between himself as a
philosopher and himself as a religious Israelite, between the
positive element of religion and the metaphysical idea of deity ;
but in such a way that even the abstract element is with him
more or less invested with imaginative forms. In Christianity
this Logos first attained perfect consistence, i.e., religion now
concentrated itself exclusively on that element, that object,
which is the basis of its essential difference. The Logos is the
personified essence of religion. Hence the definition of God
as the essence of feeling, has its complete truth only in the
Logos.

Th. xvi. p. 490.

THE -MYSTEKY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 143

God as God is feeling as yet shut up, hidden; only Christ
is the unclosed, open feeling or heart. In Christ feeling is
first perfectly certain of itself, and assured heyond doubt of the
truth and divinity of its own nature; for Christ denies nothing
to feeling ; he fulfils all its prayers. In God the soul is still
silent as to what affects it most closely, it only sighs ; hut in
Christ it speaks out fully ; here it has no longer any reserves.
To him who only sighs, wishes are still attended with disqui
etude ; he rather complains that what he wishes is not, than
openly, positively declares what he wishes ; he is still in doubt
whether his wishes have the force of law. But in Christ, all
anxiety of the soul vanishes; he is the sighing soul passed
into a song of triumph over its complete satisfaction ; he is the
joyful certainty of feeling that its wishes hidden in God have
truth and reality, the actual victory over death, over all the
powers of the world and Nature, the resurrection no longer
merely hoped for, but already accomplished ; he is the heart
released from all oppressive limits, from all sufferings, the soul
in perfect blessedness, the Godhead made visible.*

To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of the
heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God, as an
object of thought only, i.e., God as God, is always a remote
being ; the relation to him is an abstract one, like that relation
of friendship in which we stand to a man who is distant from
us, and personally unknown to us. However his works, the
proofs of love which he gives us, may make his nature present
to us, there always remains an unfilled void, the heart is un
satisfied, we long to see him. So long as we have not met a
being face to face, we are always in doubt whether he be
really such as we imagine him ; actual presence alone gives.

* " Because God has given us his Son, he has with him given us every
thing, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven, righteousness, life ; all,
all must be ours, because the Son is ours as a gift, in whom all else is
included." Luther (T. xv. p. 311). " The best part of the resurrection
has already happened ; Christ, the head of all Christendom, has passed
through death, and risen from the dead. Moreover, the most excellent
part of me, my soul, has likewise passed through death, and is with Christ
in the heavenly being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do
me?" Luther (T. xvi. p. 235). "A Christian man has equal power
with Christ, has fellowship with him and a common tenure. (T. xiii.
p. 648.) " Whoever cleaves to Christ, has as much as he." (T. xvi.
p. 574)

144 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY;

final confidence, perfect repose. Christ is God known per
sonally ; Christ, therefore, is the blessed certainty that God is
what the soul desires and needs him to be. God, as the object
of prayer, is indeed already a human being, since he sympa
thizes with human misery, grants human wishes ; but still he
is not yet an object to the religious consciousness as a real
man. Hence, only in Christ is the last wish of religion
realized, the mystery of religious feeling solved : solved how
ever in the language of imagery proper to religion, for what
God is in essence, that Christ is in actual appearance. So far
the Christian religion may justly be called the absolute religion.
That God, who in himself is nothing else than the nature of
man, should also have a real existence as such, should be as
man an object to the consciousness this is the goal of reli
gion. And this the Christian religion has attained in the in
carnation of God, which is by no means a transitory act, for
Christ remains man even after his ascension, man in heart
and man in form, only that his body is no longer an earthly
one, liable to suffering.

The incarnations of the Deity with the orientals the Hin
doos for example, have no such intense meaning as the Chris
tian incarnation ; just because they happen often they become
indifferent, they lose their value. The manhood of God is his
personality ; the proposition, God is a personal being, means :
God is a human being, God is a man. Personality is an ab
straction, which has reality only in an actual man.* The idea
which lies at the foundation of the incarnations of God is
therefore infinitely better conveyed by one incarnation, one
personality. Where God appears in several persons succes
sively, these personalities are evanescent. What is required is a
permanent, an exclusive personality. Where there are many
incarnations, room is given for innumerable others ; the ima
gination is not restrained ; and even those incarnations w T hich
are already real pass into the category of the merely possible
and conceivable, into the category of fancies, or of mere ap
pearances. But where one personality is exclusively believed

* This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modern
speculations concerning the personality of God. If you are not ashamed
of a personal God, do not be ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract
colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an empty
shade.

THE MYSTEKY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 145

in and contemplated, this at once impresses with the power of
an historical personality ; imagination is done away with, the
freedom to imagine others is renounced. This one personality
presses on me the belief in its reality. The characteristic
of real personality is precisely exclusiveness, the Leibnitzian
principle of distinction, namely, that no one existence is ex
actly like another. The tone, the emphasis, with which the
one personality is expressed, produces such an effect on the
feelings, that it presents itself immediately as a real one, and
is converted from an object of the imagination into an object
of historical knowledge.

Longing is the necessity of feeling ; and feeling longs
for a personal God. But this longing after the personality
of God is true, earnest, and profound, only when it is the
longing for one personality, when it is satisfied with one.
With the plurality of persons, the truth of the want vanishes,
and personality becomes a mere luxury of the imagination.
But that w T hich operates with the force of necessity, operates
with the force of reality on man. That which to the feelings
is a necessary being, is to them immediately a real being.
Longing says: There must be a personal God, i. e., it cannot
be that there is not; satisfied feeling says: He is. The guaran
tee of his existence lies for feeling in its sense of the necessity
of his existence ; the necessity of the satisfaction in the force
of the want. Necessity knows no law besides itself ; necessity
breaks iron. Feeling knows no other necessity than its own,
than the necessity of feeling, than longing ; it holds in extreme
horror the necessity of Nature, the necessity of reason. Thus
to feeling, a subjective, sympathetic, personal God is neces
sary; but it demands one personality alone, and this an
historical, real one. Only when it is satisfied in the unity
of personality has feeling any concentration ; plurality dissi
pates it.

But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the truth
of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality is blood.
The last proof, announced with peculiar emphasis by the author
of the fourth gospel, that the visible person of God was no
phantasm, no illusion, but a real man, is, that blood flowed
from his side on the cross. If the personal God has a true
sympathy with distress, he must himself suffer distress. Only
in his suffering lies the assurance of his reality ; only on this

H

146 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

depends the impress! veness of the incarnation. To see God
does not satisfy feeling ; the eyes give no sufficient guarantee.
The truth of vision is confirmed only by touch. But as sub
jectively touch, so objectively the capability of being touched,
palpability, passibility, is the last criterion of reality ; hence
the passion of Christ is the highest confidence, the highest
self- enjoyment, the highest consolation of feeling; for only
in the blood of Christ is the thirst for a personal, that is, a
human, sympathizing, tender God, allayed.

" Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when such
(namely, divine) majesty is taken away from Christ according
to his manhood, thereby depriving Christians of their highest
consolation, which they have in .... the promise of the
presence of their Head, King and High Priest, who has pro
mised them that not his mere Godhead, which to us poor
sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, but He, He, the
Man who has spoken with us, who has proved all sorrows in
the human form which he took upon him, who therefore can
have fellow-feeling with us as his brethren, that He will
be with us in all our need, according to the nature whereby he
is our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh."*

It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the religion of
one personal God, but of three personalities. These three
personalities have certainly an existence in dogma ; but even
there the personality of the Holy Spirit is only an arbitrary
decision which is contradicted by impersonal definitions, as for
example that the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father and
Son.f Already the very "procession" of the Holy Ghost pre
sents an evil prognostic for his personality, for a personal
being is produced only by generation, not by an indefinite
emanation or by spiratio. And even the Father, as the repre
sentative of the rigorous idea of the Godhead, is a personal
being only according to opinion and assertion, not according
to his definitions : he is an abstract idea, a purely rationalistic
being. Only Christ is the plastic personality. To personality
belongs form; form is the reality of personality. Christ alone
is the personal God ; he is the real God of Christians, a truth

* Concordienb. Erklar. Art. 8.

f This was excellently shown by Faustus Socinus. See his Defcns.
Animadv. in Assert. Theol. Coll. Posnan. de trino et uno Deo. Irenopoli,
1656. c. 11.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 147

which cannot he too often repeated.* In him alone is concen
trated the Christian religion, the essence of religion in general.
He alone meets the longing for a personal God ; he alone is an
existence identical with the nature of feeling ; on him alone
are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and all the suffer
ings of the heart; in him alone are feeling and imagination
exhausted. Christ is the "blending in one of feeling and
imagination.

Christianity is distinguished from other religions hy this,
that in other religions the heart and imagination are divided,
in Christianity they coincide. Here the imagination does not
wander, left to itself; it follows the leadings of the heart; it
describes a circle, whose centre is feeling. Imagination is here
limited by the wants of the heart, it only realizes the wishes of
feeling, it has reference only to the one thing needful ; in brief,
it has, at least generally, a practical, concentric tendency, not a
vagrant, merely poetic one. The miracles of Christianity
no product of free, spontaneous activity, but conceived in the
bosom of yearning, necessitous feeling place us immediately
on the ground of common, real life ; they act on the emotional
man with irresistible force, because they have the necessity of
feeling on their side. The power of imagination is here
at the same time the power of the heart, imagination is
only the victorious, triumphant heart. With the orientals,
with the Greeks, imagination, untroubled by the wants of the
heart, revelled in the enjoyment of earthly splendour and

* Let the reader examine, with, reference to this, the writings of the
Christian orthodox theologians against the heterodox ; for example, against
the Socinians. Modern theologians, indeed, agree with the latter, as is well
known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as accepted by the Church
to be unbiblical ; but it is undeniably the characteristic principle of Chris
tianity, and even if it does not stand in the Bible in the form which is
fiven to it by dogma, it is nevertheless a necessary consequence of what is
>und in the Bible. A being who is the fulness of the godhead bodily,
who is omniscient (John xvi. 30) and almighty (raises the dead, works
miracles), who is before all things, both in time and rank, who has life in
himself (though an imparted life) like as the father has life in himself,
what, if we follow out the consequences, can such a being be, but God ?
" Christ is one with the Father in will ; " but unity of will presup
poses unity of nature. " Christ is the ambassador, the representative of
God ;" but God can only be represented by a divine being. I can only
choose as my representative one in whom I find the same or similar quali
ties as in myself; otherwise I belie myself.

H 2

148 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

glory; in Christianity, it descended from the palace of the gods
into the abode of poverty, where only want rules, it humbled
itself under the sway of the heart. But the more it limited
itself in extent, the more intense became its strength. The
wantonness of the Olympian gods could not maintain itself
before the rigorous necessity of the heart ; but imagination is
omnipotent when it has a bond of union with the heart. And
this bond between the freedom of the imagination and the
necessity of the heart is Christ. All things are subject to
Christ ; he is the Lord of the world who does with it what He
will : but this unlimited power over Nature is itself again
subject to the power of the heart; Christ commands raging
Nature to be still, but only that he may hear the sighs of the
needy.

CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 149

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND
HEATHENISM.

CHRIST is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released
from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the
world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the
heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to
heaven of the imagination t Christ therefore is the distinc
tion of Christianity from Heathenism.

In Christianity, man w r as concentrated only on himself, he
unlinked himself from the chain of sequences in the system
of the universe, he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an
absolute, extra - and supramundane being. Because he no
longer regarded himself as a being immanent in the world,
because he severed himself from connexion with it, he felt him
self an unlimited being (for the sole limit of subjectivity is
the world, is objectivity), he had no longer any reason to doubt
the truth and validity of his subjective wishes and feelings.

The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature
by retreating within themselves, limited their subjectivity by
the contemplation of the world. Highly as the ancients esti
mated the intelligence, the reason, they were yet liberal and
objective enough, theoretically as well as practically to allow
that which they distinguished from mind, namely, matter, to
live, and even to live eternally ; the Christians evinced their
theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their belief that
they secured the eternity of their subjective life, only by anni
hilating, as in the doctrine of the destruction of the world, the
opposite of subjectivity Nature. The ancients were free from
themselves, but their freedom w T as that of indifference towards
themselves ; the Christians were free from Nature, but their
freedom was not that of reason, not true freedom, which limits
itself by the contemplation of the world, by Nature, it was
the freedom of feeling and imagination, the freedom of miracle.
The ancients w r ere so enraptured by the Cosmos, that they lost
sight of themselves, suffered themselves to be merged in the

150 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

whole ; the Christians despised the world ; what is the creature
compared with the Creator ? what are sun, moon, and earth,
compared with the human soul?* The world passes away,
but man, nay, the individual, personal man is eternal. If the
Christians severed man from all community with Nature, and
hence fell into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which
stigmatized the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as
an impious violation of human dignity ; the heathens, on the
other hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of
depreciation which abolishes the distinction between man and
the brute, or even, as was the case, for example, with Celsus,
the opponent of Christianity, degrades man beneath the
brute.

But the heathens considered man not only in connexion
with the universe ; they considered the individual man, in con
nexion with other men, as member of a commonwealth. They
rigorously distinguished the individual from the species, the
individual as a part from the race as a whole, and they subor
dinated the part to the whole. Men pass away, but mankind
remains, says a heathen philosopher. " Why wilt thou grieve
over the loss of thy daughter?" writes Sulpicius to Cicero.
" Great, renowned cities and empires have passed away, and
thou behavest thus at the death of an ho-munculus, a little
human being ! Where is thy philosophy ?" The idea of man
as an individual was to the ancients a secondary one, attained
through the idea of the species. Though they thought highly
of the race, highly of the excellences of mankind, highly and
sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought slightly
of the individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared nothing
for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and
mind. Christianity not, certainly, the Christianity of the
present day, which has incorporated with itself the cul
ture of heathenism, and has preserved only the name and
some general positions of Christianity is the direct opposite
of heathenism, and only when it is regarded as such is it truly
comprehended, nnd untravestied by arbitrary speculative inter
pretation ; it is true so far as its opposite is false, and

* " How much better is it, that I should lose the whole world than that
I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable
worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds ?
For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the etrril ?
One soul is better than the whole world." Luther (T. xix. p. 21).

CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 151

false so far as its opposite is true. The ancients sacrificed
the individual to the species ; the Christians sacrificed the
species to the individual. Or, heathenism conceived the indi
vidual only as a part in distinction from the whole of the
species ; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual
only in immediate, undistinguishable unity with the species.

To Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate
Providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being.
The heathens believed in a Providence for the individual, only
through his relation to the race, through law, through the order
of the world, and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not mira
culous Providence;* but the Christians left out the intermediate
process, and placed themselves in immediate connexion with
the prescient, all-embracing, universal Being ; i.e., they imme
diately identified the individual with the universal being.

But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity.
All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God,
are attributes of the species attributes, which in the indivi
dual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in the
essence of the species, and even in its existence, in so far as
it has its complete existence only in all men taken toge
ther. My knowledge, my will, is limited ; but my limit is not
the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind ; what is
difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, incon
ceivable, to one age, is to the coming age conceivable and
possible. My life is bound to a limited time ; not so the life of
humanity. The history of mankind consists of nothing else
than a continuous and progressive conquest of limits, which
at a given time pass for the limits of humanity, and there
fore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future
always unveils the fact, that the alleged limits of the species
were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs oi
this are presented by the history of philosophy and of physical
science. It would be highly interesting and instructive to
write a history of the sciences entirely from this point of view,
in order to exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of
the individual that he can set limits to his race. Thus the
species is unlimited ; the individual alone limited.

* It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the
Stidbs (see e. g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss. xi.), believed that the
divine Providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the par-

152 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the
individual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the
perfect Being ; in this contemplation he possesses what other
wise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is nothing
else than the immediate unity of species and individuality, of the
universal and individual being. God is the idea of the species
as an individual the idea or essence of the species, which as
a species, as universal being, as the totality of all perfections,
of all attributes or realities, freed from all the limits which exist
in the consciousness and feeling of the individual, is at the
same time again an individual, personal being. Ipse suum esse
est. Essence and existence are in God identical ; which means
nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the species,
conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The
highest idea on the stand-point of religion is : God does not
love, he is himself love ; he does not live, he is life ; he is
not just, but justice itself; not a person, but personality
itself, the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete ex
istence.*

Because of this immediate unity of the species with indivi
duality, this concentration of all that is universal and real in
one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing
to the imagination ; whereas, the idea of humanity has little
power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstrac
tion ; and the reality which presents itself to us in distinction
from this abstraction, is the multitude of separate, limited indi
viduals. In God, on the contrary, feeling has immediate satis
faction, because here all is embraced in one, i. e., because here
the species has an immediate existence, is an individuality.
God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he is the perfect
universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species
as an all- comprehending unity. But God is only man's intui
tion of his own nature ; thus the Christians are distinguished

ticular, the individual ; but they identified Providence with Nature, Law,
Necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism,
did indeed believe in miracles wrought by Providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1.
ii. and de Divinat. 1. i.) ; but their miracles had no such supranaturalistic
significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supra-
naturalistic axiom : " Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit."

* " Dicimur amare et Deus ; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hunc
modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut veritas etc." Bernard, (de
Consider. 1. v.).

CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. ] 53

from .the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the
individual with the species that with them the individual has
the significance of the species, the individual by himself is held
to he the perfect representative of the species that they deify
the human individual, make him the absolute being.

Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity
and Heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the
intelligence, to the understanding, to the VOVQ. The Christians
individualized the understanding, the heathens made it a uni
versal essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the
intelligence, was the essence of man ; to the Christians, it was
only a part of themselves. To the heathens therefore only
the intelligence, the species, to the Christians the individual,
was immortal, i. e. divine. Hence follows the further difference
between heathen and Christian philosophy.

The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol
of this immediate identity of the species and individuality in
Christianity, is Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ
is the ideal of humanity become existent, the compendium of
all moral and divine perfections to the exclusion of all that is
negative ; pure, heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the
Adam Kadmon ; not regarded as the totality of the species, of
mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person.
Christ, i. e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore not the
central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians
expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the
Bible, Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms
of our exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world.
History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the
race. Where this distinction ceases, history ceases ; the very
soul of history is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the
contemplation and appropriation of this realized Ideal, and the
spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence of a
fixed belief, the preaching that God has appeared, and that
the end of the world is at hand.

Since the immediate identity of the species and the indi
vidual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of
course that this universal, ideal individual was declared to be
a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore
a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the immediate
identity of the species and individual, for it is only the ima
gination which effects this identity, the imagination to which

H3

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nothing is impossible, and which is also the creator of miracles ;
for the greatest of miracles is the being who while he is an
individual is at the same time the ideal, the species, humanity
in the fulness of its perfection and infinity, i. e., the Godhead.
Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the biblical or
dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If the prin
ciple be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?

The total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity
is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the
universal sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation
of this doctrine the demand that the individual shall not be an
individual, a demand which again is based on the presupposi
tion that the individual by himself is a perfect being, is by
himself the adequate presentation or existence of the species.*
Here is entirely wanting the objective perception, the con
sciousness, that the tlwu belongs to the perfection of the /,
that men are required to constitute humanity, that only men
taken together are what man should and can be. All men are
sinners. Granted : but they are not all sinners in the same
way ; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential differ
ence between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another
is not ; he would rather give up his life than break his word
or tell a lie ; the third has a propensity to intoxication, the
fourth to licentiousness ; while the fifth, whether by favour of
Nature, or from the energy of his character, exhibits none
of these vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical
and intellectual elements, men compensate for each other, so
that taken as a whole they are as they should be, they present
the perfect man.

Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates ; involuntarily
and without disguise, man is different in intercourse from what
he is when alone. Love especially works wonders, and the love
of the sexes most of all. Man and woman are the complement
of each other, and thus united they first present the species,

* It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute in the
phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in
so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single and, as such, a
finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstraction
of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, and
only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be.

CHKISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 155

the perfect man.* Without species, love is inconceivable.
Love is nothing else than the self-consciousness of the species
as evolved within the difference of sex. In love, the reality of
the species, which otherwise is only a thing of reason, an ohject
of mere thought, becomes a matter of feeling, a truth of feeling ;
for in love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality
taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a need
of the heart ; he reckons another as part of his own being ; he
declares the life which he has through love to be the truly
human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i.e., of the species.
The individual is defective, imperfect, weak, needy ; but love
is strong, perfect, contented, tree from wants, self-sufficing,
infinite ; because in it the self- consciousness of the individuality
is the mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection of the
race. But this result of love is produced by friendship also,
at least where it is intense, where it is a religion, f as it was
with the ancients. Friends compensate for each other ; friend
ship is a means of virtue, and more : it is itself virtue,
dependent however on participation. Friendship can only exist
between the virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be
based on perfect similarity; on the contrary, it requires diversity,
for friendship rests on a desire for self-completion. One friend
obtains through the other what he does not himself possess.
The virtues of the one atone for the failings of the other.
Friend justifies friend before God. However faulty a man may
be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him if he has
worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect, I
yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If therefore I
am called to account for any sins, weaknesses and faults, I
interpose as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of my friend.
How barbarous, how unreasonable would it be to condemn me

* With the Hindoos (Inst. of Menu) he alone is " a perfect man who
consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his son. For man
and wife, and father and son, are one." The Adam of the Old Testament
also is incomplete without woman; he feels his need of her. But the Adam
of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is
constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer
any sexual impulses or functions.

f " Hse sane vires amicitise mortis contemptum ingenerare

potuerunt : quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immor-
talium ceremoniis debetur. Illis enim publica salus, his privata continetur."
Valerius Max. 1. iv. c, 7.

156 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

for sins which I doubtless have committed, but which I have
myself condemned, in loving my friends, who are free from
these sins !

But if friendship and love, which themselves are only sub
jective realizations of the species, make out of singly imperfect
beings an at least relatively perfect whole, how much more do
the sins and failings of individuals vanish in the species
itself, which has its adequate existence only in the sum total
of mankind, and is therefore only an object of reason ! Hence
the lamentation over sin is found only where the human in
dividual regards himself in his individuality as a perfect, com
plete being, not needing others for the realization of the
species, of the perfect man; where instead of the consciousness
of the species has been substituted the exclusive self-conscious
ness of the individual; where the individual does not recog
nise himself as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with the
species, and for this reason makes his oivn sins, limits and
weaknesses, the sins, limits and weaknesses of mankind in
general. Nevertheless man cannot lose the consciousness of
the species, for his self- consciousness is essentially united to his
consciousness of another than himself. Where therefore the
species is not an object to him as a species, it will be an object
to him as God. He supplies the absence of the idea of the
species by the idea of God, as the being who is free from the
limits and wants which oppress the individual, and, in his
opinion (since he identifies the species with the individual),
the species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits
of the individual, is nothing else than the species, which
reveals the infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realized in
infinitely numerous and various individuals. If all men were
absolutely alike, there would then certainly be no distinction
between the race and the individual. But in that case the
existence of many men would be a pure superfluity ; a single
man would have achieved the ends of the species. In the one
who enjoyed the happiness of existence, all would have had
their complete substitute.

Doubtless the essence of man is one ; but this essence is
infinite ; its real existence is therefore an infinite, recipro
cally compensating variety, which reveals the riches of this
essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence. Be
tween me and another human being and this other is the
representative of the species, even though he is only one, for

CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 157

he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a
universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose
name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that, when
united only with one, I have a participated, a human life;
between me and another human heing there is an essential,
qualitative distinction. The other is my thou, the re
lation being reciprocal, my alter ego, man objective to me,
the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In
another I first have the consciousness of humanity ; through
him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man : in my love for
him it is first clear to me that he belongs to me and I to him,
that we two cannot be without each other, that only com
munity constitutes humanity. But morally, also, there is a
qualitative, critical distinction between the I and tliou.
My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my
failings a reproach to me, even when he does not expressly
mention thenv he is my personified feeling of shame.
The consciousness of the moral law, of right, of propriety, of
truth itself, is indissolubly united with my consciousness
of another than myself. That is true in which another
agrees with me, agreement is the first criterion of truth; but
only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth.
That which I think only according to the standard of my
individuality, is not binding on another, it can be conceived
otherwise, it is an accidental, merely subjective view. But
that which I think according to the standard of the species,
I think as man in general only can think, and consequently as
every individual must think if he thinks normally, in accordance,
with law, and therefore truly. That is true which agrees with
the nature of the species, that is false which contradicts it.
There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is to me
the representative of the species, the substitute of the rest, nay
his judgment may be of more authority with me than the
judgment of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic
make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is
still sand; mine be the pearl a judicious friend. The
agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normal-
ness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot so
abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect
freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial
judgment; through him I correct, complete, extend my own
judgment, my own taste, my own knowledge. In short,

158 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

there is a qualitative, critical difference between men. But
Christianity extinguishes this qualitative distinction ; it sets the
same stamp on all men alike, and regards them as one and the
same individual, because it knows no distinction between the
species and the individual : it has one and the same means
of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original
sin in all.

Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity,
knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemp
tion, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins
and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural and
peculiar, nay a personal, subjective aid in order to overcome
sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that is, no qualita
tively different men exist, or, which is the same thing, if
there is no distinction betweeen me and others, if we are all
perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralized by the opposite
qualities of other men : then assuredly my sin is a blot of
shame which cries up to heaven ; a revolting horror which can
be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous
means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation.
My fellow-man is per se, the mediator between me and the
sacred idea of the species. Homo homini Deus est. My sin is
made to shrink within its limits, is thrust back into its nothing
ness, by the fact that it is only mine, and not that of my
fellows.

CELIBACY AND MOXACHISM. 159

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY
AND MONACHISM.

THE idea of man as a species, and with it the significance of
the life of the species, of humanity as a whole, vanished as
Christianity became dominant. Herein we have a new con
firmation of the position advanced, that Christianity does not
contain within itself the principle of culture. Where man
immediately identifies the species with the individual, and
posits this identity as his highest being, as God, where the
idea of humanity is thus an object to him only as the idea of
Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished ; man has all
in himself, all in his God, consequently he has no need to
supply his own deficiencies by others as the representatives of
the species, or by the contemplation of the world generally;
and this need is alone the spring of culture. The individual
man attains his end by himself alone ; he attains it in God,
God is himself the attained goal, the realized highest aim of
humanity : but God is present to each individual separately.
God only is the want of the Christian ; others, the human race,
the world, are not necessary to him; he has not the inward need
of others. God fills to me the place of the species, of my fellow-
men ; yes, when I turn away from the world, when I am in
isolation, I first truly feel my need of God, I first have a
lively sense of his presence, I first feel what God is, and what
he ought to be to me. It is true that the religious man has
need also of fellowship, of edification in common ; but this
need of others is always in itself something extremely
subordinate. The salvation of the soul is the fundamental
idea, the main point in Christianity; and this salvation lies
only in God, only in the concentration of the mind on Him.
Activity for others is required, is a condition of salvation ; but
the ground of salvation is God, immediate reference in all
things to God. And even activity for others has only a religious
significance, has reference only to God, as its motive and end,

160 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is essentially only an activity for God, for the glorifying of
his name, the spreading abroad of his praise. But God is
absolute subjectivity, subjectivity separated from the world,
above the world, set free from matter, severed from the life of
the species, and therefore from the distinction of sex. Separa
tion from the world, from matter, from the life of the species,
is therefore the essential aim of Christianity.* And this aim had
its visible, practical realization in Monachism.

It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from
the east. At least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they
who maintain it should be consistent enough to derive the
opposite tendency of Christendom, not from. Christianity, but
from the spirit of the western nations, the occidental nature in
general. But how, in that case, shall we explain the monastic
enthusiasm of the west ? Monachism must rather be derived
directly from Christianity itself: it was a necessary consequence
of the belief in heaven, promised to mankind by Christianity.
Where the heavenly life is a truth, the earthly life is a lie ; where
imagination is all, reality is nothing. To him who believes in
an eternal heavenly life, the present life loses its value, or
rather, it has already lost its value : belief in the heavenly life
is belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this life. I
cannot represent to myself the future life without longing for
it, without casting down a look of compassion or contempt on
this pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life can be no object,
no law of faith, without, at the same time, being a law of morality :
it must determine my actions, f at least if my life is to be in
accordance with my faith : I ought not to cleave to the tran
sitory things of this earth. I ought not ; but neither do I
wish ; for what are all things here below compared with the
glory of the heavenly life ?J

* " The life for God is not this natural life, which is subject to decay.

Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to all

these temporal things? .... Wherefore we should find consolation in
heartily despising this life and this world, and from our hearts sigh for and
desire the future honour and glory of eternal life." Luther (Th. i. s. 466,
467).

f "Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus." Meditat.
Sacrse Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46.

* " Affectanti coelestia, terrena non sapiunt. .ZEternis inhianti, fastidio
sunt transitoria." Bernard. (Epist. Ex persona Helire monachi ad parentes).
" Nihil nostra refert in hoc sevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter excedere." Ter-
tullian (Apol. adv. Gentes, c. 41). " Wherefore a Christian man should

CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 161

It is true that the quality of that life depends on the quality,
the moral condition of this ; but morality is itself determined
hy the faith in eternal life. The morality corresponding to the
super- terrestrial life is simply separation from the world, the
negation of this life : and the practical attestation of this spi
ritual separation is the monastic life.* Everything must ulti
mately take an external form, must present itself to the senses.
An inward disposition must become an outward practice. The
life of the cloister, indeed ascetic life in general, is the heavenly
life as it is realized and can be realized here below. If my
soul belongs to heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to the
earth with my body ? The soul animates the body. But if
the soul is in heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and thus the
medium, the organ of connexion between the world and the
soul is annihilated. Death, the separation of the soul from
the body, at least from this gross, material, sinful body, is the
entrance into heaven. But if death is the condition of bless
edness and moral perfection, then necessarily mortification is
the one law of morality. Moral death is the necessary antici
pation of natural death ; I say necessary, for it would be the
extreme of immorality to attribute the obtaining of heaven to
physical death, which is no moral act, but a natural one com
mon to man and the brute. Death must therefore be exalted
into a moral, a spontaneous act. " I die daily," says the
apostle, and this dictum Saint Anthony, the founder of mona-
chism,f made the theme of his life.

But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a spiritual
freedom. True ; but what is that spiritual freedom which does
not pass into action, which does not attest itself in practice?
Or dost thou believe that it only depends on thyself, on thy
will, on thy intention, whether thou be free from anything ?
If so, thou art greatly in error, and hast never experienced
what it is to be truly made free. So long as thou art in a

rather be advised to bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that
death should come, the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says,
nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian, than soon to die. But
we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal, when he says : * Orandum est ut sit
mens sana in corpore sano.' " Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).

* " Ille perfectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est elongatus." De
Modo bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s. vii. (Among the spurious writings of
St. Bernard.)

f On this subject see " Hieronymus, de Vita Pauli primi Eremitse."

162 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

given rank, profession, or relation, so long art thou, willingly
or not, determined by it. Thy will, thy determination, frees
thee only from conscious limitations and impressions, not from
the unconscious ones which lie in the nature of the case. Thus
we do not feel at home, we are under constraint, so long as we
are not locally, physically separated from one with whom we
have inwardly broken. External freedom is alone the full
truth of spiritual freedom. A man who has really lost spiritual
interest in earthly treasures, soon throws them out at window,
that his heart may be thoroughly at liberty. What I no longer
possess by inclination is a burden to me ; so away with it !
What affection has let go, the hand no longer holds fast. Only
affection gives force to the grasp; only affection makes pos
session sacred. He who having a wife is as though he had her
not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have as though
one had not, is to have without the disposition to have, is in
truth not to have. And therefore he who says, that one ought
to have a thing as though one had it not, merely says in a
subtle, covert, cautious way, that one ought not to have it at
all. That which I dismiss from my heart is no longer mine,
it is free as air. St. Anthony took the resolution to renounce
the world when he had once heard the saying, " If thou wilt
be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou hast and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and
follow me." St. Anthony gave the only true interpretation of
this text. He went his way, and sold his possessions, and gave
the proceeds to the poor. Only thus did he prove his spiritual
freedom from the treasures of this world.*

Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradiction with
the Christianity of the present day, according to which the
Lord has required only a spiritual freedom, i. e., a freedom
which demands no sacrifice, no energy, an illusory, self-
deceptive freedom ; a freedom from earthly good, which con
sists in its possession and enjoyment ! For certainly the
Lord said, " My yoke is easy." How harsh, how unreasonable
would Christianity be, if it exacted from man the renunciation

* Naturally, Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome
writes to Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuc calebat criior et fervebat recens
in credentibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold. Von der ersten
Christen GrenugsamTceit u. Verscliinalmny alles Eigennutzes, 1, c. B. iv. c.
12, 7 16.

CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 163

of earthly riches ! Then assuredly Christianity would not be
suited to this world. So far from this, Christianity is in the
highest degree practical and judicious; it defers the freeing
oneself from the wealth and pleasures of this world to the
moment of natural death; (monkish mortification is an un
christian suicide) and allots to our spontaneous activity the
acquisition and enjoyment of earthly possessions. Genuine
Christians do not indeed doubt the truth of the heavenly life,
God forbid! Therein they still agree with the ancient
monks ; but they await that life patiently, submissive to the
will of God, i. e., to their own selfishness, to the agreeable
pursuit of worldly enjoyment.* But I turn away with loath
ing and contempt from modern Christianity, in which the bride
of Christ readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in succes
sive polygamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian
does not essentially differ from contemporaneous polygamy;
but yet at the same time oh! shameful hypocrisy! swears
by the eternal, universally binding, irrefragable, sacred truth
of God's word. I turn back with reverence to the miscon
ceived truth of the chaste monastic cell, where the soul
betrothed to heaven did not allow itself to be wooed into
faithlessness by a strange, earthly body !

The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also an un
married life. The celibate lies already, though not in the form
of a law, in the inmost nature of Christianity. This is suf
ficiently declared in the supernatural origin of the Saviour,
a doctrine in which unspotted virginity is hallowed as the
saving principle, as the principle of the new, the Christian
world. Let not such passages as, " Be fruitful and multiply,"
or, " What God has joined together let not man put asunder,"
be urged as a sanction of marriage. The first passage relates,
as Tertullian and Jerome have already observed, only to the
unpeopled earth, not to the earth when filled with men, only to
the beginning not to the end of the world, an end which was

* How far otherwise the ancient Christians ! " Difficile, imo impossible
est, ut et praesentibus quis et futuris fruatur bonis." Hieronymus (Epist.
Juliano). " Delicatus es, frater, si et hie vis gaudere cum seculo et postea
regnare cum Christo." Ib. (Epist. ad Heliodorum). " Ye wish to have both
God and the creature together, and that is impossible. Joy in God and joy
in the creature cannot subsist together." Tauler (ed. c. p. 334). But they
were abstract Christians. And we live now in the age of conciliation.
Yes, truly !

164 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon earth.
And the second also refers only to marriage as an institution
of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed the question
whether it were lawful for a man to separate from his wife ; and
the most appropriate way of dealing with this question was the an
swer above cited. He who has once concluded a marriage ought
to hold it sacred. Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to
the weakness or rather the strength of the flesh, an evil which
therefore must be restricted as much as possible. The indis-
solubleness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which
expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and
perturbed by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself is,
in the sense of perfected Christianity, a sin,* or rather a weak
ness, which is permitted and forgiven thee only on condition
that thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife. In short,
marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament, but not in the
New. The New Testament knows a higher, a supernatural
principle, the mystery of unspotted virginity.f " He who can
receive it let him receive it." " The children of this world
marry, and are given in marriage : but they which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection
from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage :
neither can they die any more : for they are equal unto the
angels ; and are the children of God, being the children of
the resurrection." Thus in heaven there is no marriage ; the
principle of sexual love is excluded from heaven as an earthly,
worldly principle. But the heavenly life is the true, perfected,
eternal life of the Christian. Why then should I, who am
destined for heaven, form a tie which is unloosed in my true
destination ? Why should I, who am potentially a heavenly
being, not realize this possibility even here ? j Marriage is
already proscribed from my mind, my heart, since it is expelled

* " Perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est." Hieronymus (Epist. ad
Heliodorum de laude Vitse solit.). Let me observe once for all that I
interpret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which
they have been interpreted by the history of Christianity.

f- " The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and
held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason."
Luther (Th. ii. p. 377a).

" Prsesumendum est hos qui intra Paradisum recipi volunt debere ces-
sare ab eare,aquaparadisus intactus est." Tertullian(de Exhort, cast. c. 13).
"Crelibatusangelorumestiniitatio." Jo. Damasceni (Orthod. Fidei,!. iv. c. 25).

CELIBACY AND MONACH1SM. 165

from heaven, the essential object of my faith, hope, and life.
How can an earthly wife have a place in my heaven- filled
heart ? How can I divide my heart between God and man ?*
The Christian's love to God is not an abstract or general love
such as the love of truth, of justice, of science; it is a love to
a subjective, personal God, and is therefore a subjective, per
sonal love. It is an essential attribute of this love that it is
an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal and at the
same time the highest being, to whom no other can be com
pared. " Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the Christian's
God], in life and in death; trust his faithfulness: he alone
can help thee, when all else leaves thee. Thy beloved has this
quality, that he will suffer no rival ; he alone will have thy
heart, will rule alone in thy soul as a king on his throne."
" What can the world profit thee without Jesus ? To be
without Christ is the pain of hell ; to be with Christ, heavenly
sweetness." " Thou canst not live without a friend : but if
the friendship of Christ is not more than all else to thee, thou
wilt be beyond measure sad and disconsolate." " Love every
thing for Jesus' sake, but Jesus for his own sake. Jesus
Christ alone is worthy to be loved." " My God, my love [my
heart] : Thou art wholly mine, and I am wholly Thine."
" Love hopes and trusts ever in God, even when God is not
gracious to it [or tastes bitter, non sapit] ; for we cannot live

in love without sorrow For the sake of the beloved, the

loving one must accept all things, even the hard and bitter."^
" My God and my All .... In Thy presence everything is sweet
to me, in Thy absence everything is distasteful .... Without
Thee nothing can please me." " O when at last will that
blessed, longed-for hour appear, when Thou wilt satisfy me
wholly, and be all in all to me ? So long as this is not granted
-me, my joy is only fragmentary." " When was it well with me
without Thee ? or when was it ill with me in Thy presence ?
I will rather be poor for Thy sake, than rich without Thee.
I will rather be a pilgrim on earth with Thee, than the pos
sessor of heaven without Thee. Where Thou art is heaven ;
death and hell where Thou art not. I long only for Thee."
" Thou canst not serve God and at the same time have thy

* " Quse non nubit, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non dividitur ;
pudica autem, quse nupsit, vitam cum Deo et cum marito dividit."
Clemens Alex. (Paedag. 1. ii.).

166 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

joys in earthly things : thou must wean thyself from all ac
quaintances and friends, and sever thy soul from all temporal
consolation. Believers in Christ should regard themselves,
according to the admonition of the Apostle Peter, only as
strangers and pilgrims on the earth."* Thus, love to God as
a personal heing is a literal, strict, personal, exclusive love.
How then can I at once love God and a mortal wife ? Do
I not thereby place God on the same footing with my wife ?
No ! to a soul which truly loves God, the love of woman is an
impossibility, is adultery. " He that is unmarried," says the
apostle Paul, "careth for the things that belong to the Lord,
how he may please the Lord ; but he that is married careth for
the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife."

The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, because
this is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling ; he has also
no need of (natural) love. God supplies to him the want of
culture, and in like manner God supplies to him the want of
love, of a wife, of a family. The Christian immediately iden
tifies the species with the individual ; hence he strips off the
difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental adjunct, f Man
and woman together first constitute the true man, man and
woman together are the existence of the race ; for their union
is the source of multiplicity, the source of other men. Hence
the man who does not deny his manhood, is conscious that he
is only a part of a being, which needs another part for the
making up of the whole, of true humanity. The Christian,
on the contrary, in his excessive, transcendental subjectivity,
conceives that he is, by himself, a perfect being. But the
sexual instinct runs counter to this view ; it is in contra
diction with his ideal : the Christian must therefore deny this
instinct.

The Christian certainly experienced the need of sexual love,
but only as a need in contradiction with his heavenly desti
nation, and merely natural, in the depreciatory, contemptuous

* Thomas a Kempis de Imit. (1. ii. c. 7, c. 8, 1. iii. c. 5, c. 34, c. 53, c. 59).
" Felix ilia conscientia et beata virginitas, in cujus eorde prseter amorem

Christi nullus alms versatur amor." Hieronymus (Demetriadi,

Virgini Deo consecrates) .

f " Divisa est .... mulier et virgo. Vide quantse felicitatis sit, quse et
nomen sexus amiserit. Virgo jam mulier non vocatur." Hieronymus (adv.
Helvidium de perpet. Virg. p. 14. T. ii. Erasmus).

CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 167

sense which this word had in Christianity, not as a moral,
inward need, not, if I may so express myself, as a metaphy
sical, i.e., an essential need, which man can experience only
where he does not separate difference of sex from himself, hut
on the contrary regards it as belonging to his inmost nature.
Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity; at least it is so
only apparently, illusively ; for the natural principle of mar
riage, which is the love of the sexes, however civil marriage
may in endless instances contradict this, is in Christianity an
unholy thing, and excluded from heaven.* But that which
man excludes from heaven, he excludes from his true nature.
Heaven is his treasure-casket. Believe not in what he esta
blishes on earth, what he permits and sanctions here : here he
must accommodate himself ; here many things come athwart
him which do not fit into his system; here he shuns thy
glance, for he finds himself among strangers who intimidate
him. But watch for him when he throws off his incognito,
and shows himself in his true dignity, his heavenly state. In
heaven he speaks as he thinks ; there thou hearest his true
opinion. Where his heaven is, there is his heart, heaven is
his heart laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea of the
true, the good, the valid, of that which ought to be; earth,
nothing but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which
ought not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life
of the species : there the species ceases, there dwell only pure
sexless individuals, " spirits;" there absolute subjectivity reigns:
thus the Christian excludes the life of the species from his

* This may be expressed as follows : Marriage has in Christianity only
a moral, no religious significance, no religious principle and exemplar. It
is otherwise with the Greeks, where, for example, " Zeus and Here are the
great archetype of every marriage " (Creuzer, Symbol.) ; with the ancient
Parsees, where procreation, as " the multiplication of the human race, is the
dimiimtion of the empire of Ahriman," and thus a religious act and duty
(Zend-Avesta) ; with the Hindoos, where the son is the regenerated father.
Among the Hindoos no regenerate man could assume the rank of a Sany-
assi, that is, of an anchorite absorbed in God, if he had not previously paid
three debts, one of which was that he had had a legitimate son. Amongst
the Christians on the contrary, at least the Catholics, it was a true festival
of religious rejoicing when betrothed or even married persons supposing
that it happened with mutual consent renounced the married state and
sacrificed conjugal to religious love.

168 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

conception of the true life; he pronounces the principle of
marriage sinful, negative ; for the sinless, positive life is the
heavenly one.*

* Inasmuch as the religious consciousness restores everything which it
begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing else than
the present life re-established, it follows that sex must be re-esta
blished. " Erunt similes angelorum. Ergo homines non desinent

. . . . ut apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria." Hieronymus (ad Theo-
doram Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an incorporeal
body, so necessarily the sex there is one without difference, i.e., a sexless sex.

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 1 69

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.

THE onwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the heavenly,
immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life liberated
from the conditions of the species, supernatural, sexless, abso
lutely subjective life. The belief in personal immortality has at
its foundation the belief that difference of sex is only an ex
ternal adjunct of individuality, that in himself the individual
is a sexless, independently complete, absolute being. But he
who belongs to no sex, belongs to no species ; sex is the cord
which connects the individuality with the species, and he who
belongs to no species, belongs only to himself, is an altogether
independent, divine, absolute being. Hence only when the
species vanishes from the consciousness is the heavenly life a
certainty. He who lives in the consciousness of the species,
and consequently of its reality, lives also in the consciousness
of the reality of sex. He does not regard it as a mechanically
inserted, adventitious stone of stumbling, but as an inherent
quality, a chemical constituent of his being. He indeed re
cognises himself as a man in the broader sense, but he is
at the same time conscious of being rigorously determined by
the sexual distinction, which penetrates not only bones and
marrow, but also his inmost self, the essential mode of his
thought, will, and sensation. He therefore who lives in the
consciousness of the species, who limits and determines his
feelings and imagination by the contemplation of real life, of
real man, can conceive no life in which the life of the species
and therewith the distinction of sex is abolished ; he regards
the sexless individual, the heavenly spirit, as an agreeable
figment of the imagination.

But just as little as the real man can abstract himself from
the distinction of sex, so little can he abstract himself from
his moral or spiritual constitution, which indeed is profoundly
connected with his natural constitution. Precisely because he
lives in the contemplation of the w r hole, he also lives in the
consciousness that he is himself no more than a part, and that

I

170 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

he is what he is only by virtue of the conditions which consti
tute him a member of the whole, or a relative whole. Every
one, therefore, justifiably regards his occupation, his profession,
his art or science, as the highest ; for the mind of man is
nothing but the essential mode of his activity. He who is
skilful in his profession, in his art, he who fills his post well,
and is entirely devoted to his calling, thinks that calling the
highest and best. How can he deny in thought, what he em
phatically declares in act by the joyful devotion of all his
powers ? If I despise a thing, how can I dedicate to it my
time and faculties ? If I am compelled to do so in spite of
my aversion, my activity is an unhappy one, for I am at war
with myself. Work is worship. But how can I worship or
serve an object, how can I subject myself to it, if it does not
hold a high place in my mind ? In brief, the occupations of
men determine their judgment, their mode of thought, their
sentiments. And the higher the occupation, the more com
pletely does a man identify himself with it. In general, what
ever a man makes the essential aim of his life, he proclaims to
be his soul ; for it is the principle of motion in him. But
through his aim, through the activity in which he realizes this
aim, man is not only something for himself, but also some
thing for others, for the general life, the species. He there
fore who lives in the consciousness of the species as a reality,
regards his existence for others, his relation to society, his
utility to the public, as that existence which is one with the
existence of his own essence as his immortal existence. He
lives with his whole soul, with his whole heart, for humanity.
How can he hold in reserve a special existence for himself,
how can he separate himself from mankind ? How shall he
deny in death what he has enforced in life ? And in life his
faith is this : Nee sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

The heavenly life, or what we do not here distinguish from
it personal immortality, is a characteristic doctrine of Chris
tianity. It is certainly in part to be found among the heathen
philosophers ; but with them it had only the significance of a
subjective conception, because it was not connected with their
fundamental view of things. How contradictory, for example,
are the expressions of the Stoics on this subject! It was among
the Christians that personal immortality first found that prin
ciple, whence it follows as a necessary and obvious conse
quence. The contemplation of the world, of Nature, of the

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. ]?1

race, was always coming athwart the ancients ; they distin
guished between the principle of life and the living subject,
between the soul, the mind, and self: whereas the Christian
abolished the distinction between soul and person, species and
individual, and therefore placed immediately in self what belongs
only to the totality of the species. But the immediate unity of
the species and individuality, is the highest principle, the God
of Christianity, in it the individual has the significance of the
absolute being, and the necessary, immanent consequence of
this principle is personal immortality.

Or rather : the belief in personal immortality is perfectly
identical with the belief in a personal God ; i. e., that which
expresses the belief in the heavenly, immortal life of the person,
expresses God also, as he is an object to Christians, namely,
as absolute, unlimited personality. Unlimited personality is
God ; but heavenly personality, or the perpetuation of human
personality in heaven, is nothing else than personality released
from all earthly encumbrances and limitations ; the only dis
tinction is, that God is heaven spiritualized, while heaven is
God materialized, or reduced to the forms of the senses: that
what in God is posited only in abstracto is in heaven more an
object of the imagination. God is the implicit heaven ; heaven
is the explicit God. In the present, God is the kingdom
of heaven; in the future, heaven is God. God is the pledge,
the as yet abstract presence and existence of heaven ; the anti
cipation, the epitome of heaven. Our own future existence,
which, while we are in this world, in this body, is a separate,
objective existence, is God: God is the idea of the species,
which will be first realized, individualized in the other world.
God is the heavenly, pure, free essence, which exists there as
heavenly pure beings, the bliss which there unfolds itself in a
plenitude of blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing else
than the idea or the essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly
life, here comprised in an ideal personality. This is clearly
enough expressed in the belief that the blessed life is unity
with God. Here we are distinguished and separated from God,
there the partition falls ; here we are men, there gods ; here the
Godhead is a monopoly, there it is a common possession ; here
it is an abstract unity, there a concrete multiplicity.*

* " Berie dicitur, quod tune plene videbimus eum sicuti est, cum similes
ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas data est filios

I 2

172 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The only difficulty in the recognition of this is created by
the imagination, which, on the one hand by the conception
of the personality of God, on the other by the conception of
the many personalities which it places in a realm ordinarily
depicted in the hues of the senses, hides the real unity of the
idea. But in truth there is no distinction between the absolute
life which is conceived as God and the absolute life which is
conceived as heaven, save that in heaven we have stretched into
length and breadth what in God is concentrated in one point.
The belief in the immortality of man is the belief in the divinity
of man, and the belief in God is the belief in pure person
ality, released from all limits, and consequently eo ipso
immortal. The distinctions made between the immortal soul
and God are either sophistical or imaginative ; as when, for
example, the bliss of the inhabitants of heaven is again circum
scribed by limits, and distributed into degrees, in order to
establish a distinction between God and the dwellers in heaven.

The identity of the divine and heavenly personality is appa
rent even in the popular proofs of immortality. If there is not
another and a better life, God is not just and good. The jus
tice and goodness of God are thus made dependent on the
perpetuity of individuals : but without justice and goodness
God is not God; the Godhead, the existence of God, is there
fore made dependent on the existence of individuals. If I am
not immortal, I believe in no God ; he who denies immortality,
denies God. But that is impossible to me : as surely as there
is a God, so surely is there an immortality. God is the cer
tainty of my future felicity. The interest I have in knowing
that God is, is one with the interest I have in knowing that I
am, that I am immortal. God is my hidden, my assured exist
ence ; he is the subjectivity of subjects, the personality of
persons. How then should that not belong to persons which
belongs to personality ? In God I make my future into a

Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus, sed sint tamen quod
Deus est : sint sancti, futuri plene beati, quod Deus est. Nee aliunde hie
saneti, nee ibi futuri beati, quam ex Deo qui eorum et sanctitas et beatitude
est." De Yita solitaria (among the spurious writings of St. Bernard).
"Finis autena bonse voluntatis beatitude est: vita seternaipse Deus." Augus-
tin. (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. ii. dist. 38, c. 1). " The other man will be reno
vated in the spiritual life, i. e. will become a spiritual man, when he shall
be restored into the image of God. For he will be like God, in life, in
righteousness, glory, and wisdom." Luther (T. i p. 324).

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 173

present, or rather a verb into a substantive; how should I
separate the one from the other ? God is the existence corre
sponding to my wishes and feelings : he is the just one, the good,
who fulfils my wishes. Nature, this world, is an existence
which contradicts my wishes, my feelings. Here it is not as
it ought to be ; this world passes away : but God is existence
as it ought to be. God fulfils my wishes ; this is only a popular
personification of the position : God is the fulfiller, i. e., the
reality, the fulfilment of my wishes.* But heaven is the exist
ence adequate to my wishes, my longing ; f thus, there is no
distinction between God and heaven. God is the power by
which man realizes his eternal happiness ; God is the absolute
personality in which all individual persons have the certainty
of their blessedness and immortality ; God is to subjectivity the
highest, last certainty of its absolute truth and essentiality.

The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of religion ;
its testament, in which it declares its last wishes. Here there
fore it speaks out undisguisedly what it has hitherto suppressed.
If elsewhere the religious soul concerns itself with the existence
of another being, here it openly considers only its own exist
ence ; if elsewhere in religion man makes his existence de
pendent on the existence of God, he here makes the reality of
God dependent on his own reality ; and thus what elsewhere
is a primitive, immediate truth to him, is here a derivative,
secondary truth : if I am not immortal, God is not God ; if
there is no immortality, there is no God ; a conclusion already
drawn by the apostle Paul. If we do not rise again, then
Christ is not risen, and all is vain. Let us eat and drink.
It is certainly possible to do away with what is apparently
or really objectionable in the popular argumentation, by avoid
ing the inferential form ; but this can only be done by making
immortality an analytic instead of a synthetic truth, so as to
show that the very idea of God as absolute personality or

" Si bomim est habere corpus incorruptibile, quare hoc facturum Deum
volumus desperare ?" Augustinus (Opp. Antwerp. 1700. T. v. p. 698).

f " Quare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus serviet ?
Nihil tibi contradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit adversus te, . . . . Ubi

volueris, eris Credere enim debemus talia corpora nos habituros, ut

ubi velimus, quando voluerimus, ibi simus." Augustinus (1. c. p. 703, 705).
" Nihil indecorum ibi erit, summa pax erit, nihil discordans, nihil monstruo-
sum, nihil quod offendat adspectum." (1. c. 707). " Nisi beatus, non vivit ut
vult." (De Civ. Dei, L 14, c. 25).

174 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

subjectivity, is per se the idea of immortality. God is the
guarantee of my future existence, because he is already the
certainty and reality of my present existence, my salvation,
my trust, my shield from the forces of the external world ; hence
I need not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a
separate truth, for if I have God, I have immortality also.
Thus it was with the more profound Christian mystics; to
them the idea of immortality was involved in the idea of God ;
God was their immortal life, God himself their subjective
blessedness : he was for them, for their consciousness, what he
is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion.

Thus it is shown that God is heaven ; that the two are
identical. It would have been easier to prove the converse,
namely, that heaven is the true God of men. As man con
ceives his heaven, so he conceives his God ; the content of his
idea of heaven is the content of his idea of God, only that
what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven depicted
and developed in the colours and forms of the senses. Heaven
is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries of religion.
As heaven is objectively the displayed nature of God, so
subjectively it is the most candid declaration of the inmost
thoughts and dispositions of religion. For this reason, religions
are as various as are the kingdoms of heaven, and there are as
many different kingdoms of heaven as there are characteristic
differences among men. The Christians themselves have very
heterogeneous conceptions of heaven.*

The more judicious among them, however, think and say
nothing definite about heaven or the future world in general,
on the ground that it is inconceivable, that it can only be
thought of by us according to the standard of this world, a
standard not applicable to the other. All conceptions of heaven
here below are, they allege, mere images, whereby man repre
sents to himself that future, the nature of which is unknown
to him, but the existence of which is certain. It is just so
with God. The existence of God, it is said, is certain ; but

* And their conceptions of God are just as heterogeneous. The pious
Germans have a " German God," the pious Spaniards a Spanish God, the
French a French God. The French actually have the proverb : " Le bon
Dieu est Franpais." In fact polytheism must exist so long as there are
various nations. The real God of a people is the point d'hotmeur of its
nationality.

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 1*75

what he is, or how he exists, is inscrutable. But he who
speaks thus, has already driven the future world out of his
head ; he still holds it fast, either because he does not think at
all about such matters, or because it is still a want of his
heart; but, preoccupied with real things, he thrusts it as far
as possible out of his sight ; he denies with his head what he
affirms with his heart; for it is to deny the future life, to
deprive it of the qualities, by which alone it is a real and
effective object for man. Quality is not distinct from existence ;
quality is nothing but real existence. Existence without
quality is a chimera, a spectre. Existence is first made
known to me by quality ; not existence first, and after that,
quality. The doctrines that God is not to be known or de
fined, 'and that the nature of the future life is inscrutable, are
therefore not originally religious doctrines : on the contrary,
they are the products of irreligion while still in bondage
to religion, or rather hiding itself behind religion ; and they
are so for this reason, that originally the existence of God is
posited only with a definite conception of God, the existence
of a future life only with a definite conception of that life.
Thus to the Christian, only his own paradise, the paradise
which has Christian qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise
of the Mahometan or the Elysium of the Greeks. The
primary certainty is everywhere quality ; existence follows of
course, when once quality is certain. In the New Testament
we find no proofs, or general propositions such as : there is a
God, there is a heavenly life ; we find only qualities of the
heavenly life adduced; " in heaven they marry not." Natu
rally; it may be answered, because the existence of God and
of heaven is presupposed. But here reflection introduces a
distinction of which the religious sentiment knows nothing.
Doubtless the existence is presupposed, but only because the
quality is itself existence, because the inviolate religious
feeling lives only in the quality, just as to the natural man,
the real existence, the thing in itself, lies only in the quality
which he perceives. Thus in the passage above cited from
the New Testament, the virgin or rather sexless life is pre
supposed as the true life, which, however, necessarily becomes
a future one, because the actual life contradicts the ideal of the
true life. But the certainty of this future life lies only in the
certainty of its qualities as those of the true, highest life,
adequate to the ideal.

176 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a cer
tain life, there, precisely because it is certain, it is also definite.
If I know not now what and how I shall be ; if there is an
essential, absolute difference between my future and my pre
sent; neither shall I then know what and how I was before, the
unity of consciousness is at an end, personal identity is abolished,
another being will appear in my place ; and thus my future
existence is not in fact distinguished from non-existence. If,
on the other hand, there is no essential difference, the future
is to me an object that may be defined and known. And so it
is in reality. I am the abiding subject under changing con
ditions ; I am the substance which connects the present and
the future into a unity. How then can the future be obscure
to me ? On the contrary, the life of this world is the dark,
incomprehensible life, which only becomes clear through the
future life ; here I am in disguise ; there the mask will fall ;
there I shall be as I am in truth. Hence the position that
there indeed is another, a heavenly life, but that what and how
it is must here remain inscrutable, is only an invention of re
ligious scepticism which, being entirely alien to the religious
sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of religion.
That which irreligious-religious reflection converts into a
known image of an unknown yet certain thing, is originally, in
the primitive, true sense of religion, not an image, but the
thing itself. Unbelief, in the garb of belief, doubts the exist
ence of the thing, but it is too shallow or cowardly directly to
call it in question ; it only expresses doubt of the image or
conception, i.e., declares the image to be only an image. But
the untruth and hollowness of this scepticism has been
already made evident historically. Where it is once doubted
that the images of immortality are real, that it is possible to
exist as faith conceives, for example, without a material, real
body, and without difference of sex ; there the future exist
ence in general, is soon a matter of doubt. With the image
falls the thing, simply because the image is the thing itself.

The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, rests on
a mental judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it selects
a wreath from the Flora of this world, and this critical flori-
legium is heaven. That which man thinks beautiful, good,
agreeable, is for him what alone ought to be ; that which he
thinks bad, odious, disagreeable, is what ought not to be, and
hence, since it nevertheless exists, it is condemned to destruc-

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 177

tion, it is regarded as a negation. Where life is not in contra
diction with a feeling, an imagination, an idea, and where this
feeling, this idea, is not held authoritative and absolute, the
belief in another and a heavenly life does not arise. The future
life is nothing else than life in unison with the feeling, with the
idea, which the present life contradicts. The whole import of
the future life is the abolition of this discordance,, and the real
ization of a state which corresponds to the feelings, in which
man is in unison with himself. An unknown, unimagined
future is a ridiculous chimera : the other world is nothing
more than the reality of a known idea, the satisfaction of a
conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish ;* it is only the re
moval of limits which here oppose themselves to the realization
of the idea. Where would be the consolation, where the sig
nificance of a future life, if it were midnight darkness to me ?
No! from yonder world there streams upon me with the splen
dour of virgin gold, what here shines only with the dimness of
unrefined ore. The future world has no other significance,
no other basis of its existence, than the separation of
the metal from the admixture of foreign elements, the se
paration of the good from the bad, of the pleasant from the
unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the blamable. The future
world is the bridal in which man concludes his union with his
beloved. Long has he loved his bride, long has he yearned
after her ; but external relations, hard reality, have stood in
the way of his union to her. When the wedding takes
place, his beloved one does not become a different being ; else
how could he so ardently long for her ? She only becomes
his own ; from an object of yearning and affectionate desire she
becomes an object of actual possession. It is true that here
below, the other world is only an image, a conception ; still it
is not the image of a remote, unknown thing, but a portrait of
that which man loves and prefers before all else. What man
loves is his soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes of the
beloved dead in an urn ; with the Christian the heavenly future
is the mausoleum in which he enshrines his Soul.

* "Ibi nostra spes erit res." Augustin. "Therefore we have the first
fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the last day, where
in we shall see and feel the life we have believed in and hoped for."
Luther (Th. i. s. 459).

i 3

178 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

In order to comprehend a particular faith, or religion in
general, it is necessary to consider religion in its rudimentary
stages, in its lowest, rudest condition. Religion must not only
he traced in an ascending line, hut surveyed in the entire
course of its existence. It is requisite to regard the various
earlier religions as present in the absolute religion, and not
as left hehind it in the past, in order correctly to appreciate
and comprehend the absolute religion as well as the others.
The most frightful " aberrations," the wildest excesses of the
religious consciousness, often afford the profoundest insight
into the mysteries of the absolute religion. Ideas seemingly
the rudest are often only the most child-like, innocent and
true. This observation applies to the conceptions of a future
life. The " savage," whose consciousness does not extend be
yond his own country, whose entire being is a growth of its
soil, takes his country with him into the other world, either
leaving Nature as it is, or improving it, and so overcoming in
the idea of the other life the difficulties he experiences in this.*
In this limitation of uncultivated tribes there is a striking trait.
With them the future expresses nothing else than home
sickness. Death separates man from his kindred, from his
people, from his country. But the man who has not extended
his consciousness, cannot endure this separation; he must
come back again to his native land. The negroes in the West
Indies killed themselves that they might come to life again in
their father-land. And according to Ossian's conception " the
spirits of those who die in a strange land float back towards
their birth-place. "f This limitation is the direct opposite of
imaginative spiritualism, which makes man a vagabond, who,
indifferent even to the earth, roams from star to star; and
certainly there lies a real truth at its foundation. Man is what
he is through Nature, however much may belong to his spon
taneity ; for even his spontaneity has its foundation in Nature,
of which his particular character is only an expression. Be

* According to old books of travel, however, there are many tribes which,
do not believe that the future is identical with the present, or that it is
better, but that it is even worse. Parny (CEuv. chois. T. i. Melang.) tells
of a dying negro- slave, who refused the inauguration to immortality by
baptism, in these words : " Je ne veux point d'une autre vie, car peut-etre y
serais-je encore votre esclave."

f Ahlwardt (Ossian Aum. zu Carthonn.).

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 179

thankful to Nature! Man cannot be separated from it. The
German, whose God is spontaneity, owes his character to
Nature just as much as the oriental. To find fault with
Indian art, with Indian religion and philosophy, is to find
fault with Indian Nature. You complain of the reviewer who
tears a passage in your works from the context that he may
hand it over to ridicule. Why are you yourself guilty of that
which you blame in others ? Why do you tear the Indian
religion from its connexion, in which it is just as reasonable
as your absolute religion ?

Faith in a future world, in a life after death, is therefore with
" savage" tribes essentially nothing more than direct faith
in the present life immediate unbroken faith in this life.
For them, their actual life, even with its local limitations, has
all, has absolute value ; they cannot abstract from it, they
cannot conceive its being broken off; i.e., they believe directly
in the infinitude, the perpetuity of this life. Only when the
belief in immortality becomes a critical belief, when a distinc
tion is made between what is to be left behind here, and what
is in reserve there, between what here passes away, and what
there is to abide, does the belief in life after death form itself
into the belief in another life ; but this criticism, this distinction,
is applied to the present life also. Thus the Christians dis
tinguish between the natural and the Christian life, the sensual
or worldly and the spiritual or holy life. The heavenly life
is no other than that which is, already here below, distinguished
from the merely natural life, though still tainted with it. That
which the Christian excludes from himself now for example,
the sexual life is excluded from the future : the only distinc
tion is, that he is there free from that which he here wishes to
be free from, and seeks to rid himself of by the will, by devo
tion, and by bodily mortification. Hence this life is, for the
Christian, a life of torment and pain, because he is here still
beset by a hostile power, and has to struggle with the lusts of
the flesh and the assaults of the devil.

The faith of cultured nations is therefore distinguished
from that of the uncultured in the same way that culture in
general is distinguished from inculture : namely, that the
faith of culture is a discriminating, critical, abstract faith. A
distinction implies a judgment ; but where there is a judgment
there arises the distinction between positive and negative. The
faith of savage tribes is a faith without a judgment. Culture,

180 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

on the contrary, judges: to the cultured man only cultured
life is the true life ; to the Christian only the Christian life.
The rude child of Nature steps into the other life just as he is,
without ceremony : the other world is his natural nakedness.
The cultivated man, on the contrary, objects to the idea of
such an unbridled life after death, because 'even here he objects
to the unrestricted life of nature. Faith in a future life is
therefore only faith in the true life of the present; the
essential elements of this life are also the essential elements of
the other: accordingly, faith in a future life is not faith in
another unknown life; but in the truth and infinitude, and
consequently in the perpetuity, of that life which already here
below is regarded as the authentic life.

As God is nothing else than the nature of man purified from
that which to the human individual appears, whether in feeling
or thought, a limitation, an evil ; so the future life is nothing
else than the present life, freed from that which appears a limit
ation or an evil. The more definitely and profoundly the indi
vidual is conscious of the limit as a limit, of the evil as an evil,
the more definite and profound is his conviction of the future life,
where these limits disappear. The future life is the feeling,
the conception of freedom from those limits which here circum
scribe the feeling of self, the existence of the individual. The only
difference between the course of religion and that of the natural
or rational' man is, that the end which the latter arrives at by
a straight line, the former only attains by describing a curved
line a circle. The natural man remains at home because he
finds it agreeable, because he is perfectly satisfied ; religion
which commences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its home
and travels far, but only to feel the more vividly in the distance
the happiness of home. In religion man separates himself
from himself, but only to return always to the same point from
which he set out. Man negatives himself, but only to posit
himself again, and that in a glorified form : he negatives this life,
but only, in the end, to posit it again in the future life.* The

* There everything will be restored. " Qui modo vivit, erit, nee me vel
dente, vel ungue fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa sepiilchri." Aurelius
Prud. (Apotheos. de Eesurr. Carnis hum.). And this faith, which you consi
der rude and carnal, and which you therefore disavow, is the only consistent,
honest, and true faith. To the identity of the person belongs the identity of
the body.

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 181

future life is this life once lost, but found again, and radiant
with all the more brightness for the joy of recovery. The
religious man renounces the joys of this world, but only that
he may win in return the joys of heaven; or rather he re
nounces them because he is already in the ideal possession of
heavenly joys ; and the joys of heaven are the same as those
of earth, only that they are freed from the limits and con
trarieties of this life. Religion thus arrives, though by a circuit,
at the very goal, the goal of joy, towards which the natural
man hastens in a direct line. To live in images or symbols, is
the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices the thing itself to
the image. The future life is the present in the mirror of the
imagination : the enrapturing image is in the sense of religion
the true type of earthly life, real life only a glimmer of that
ideal, imaginary life. The future life is the present embel
lished, contemplated through the imagination, purified from all
gross matter; or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present
intensified.

Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatisfac
tion. But the dissatisfaction is only superficial. I do not
deny the thing to be of value ; just as it is, however, it does not
please me ; I deny only the modification, not the substance,
otherwise I should urge annihilation. A house which abso
lutely displeases me I cause to be pulled down, not to be
embellished. To the believer in a future life joy is agreeable
who can fail to be conscious that joy is something positive?
but it is disagreeable to him, that here joy is followed by
opposite sensations, that it is transitory. Hence he places joy
in the future life also, but as eternal, uninterrupted, divine joy,
(and the future life is therefore called the world of joy,) such as
he here conceives it in God ; for God is nothing but eternal,
uninterrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality or per
sonality is agreeable to him, but only as unencumbered by
objective forces ; hence, he includes individuality also, but pure,
absolutely subjective individuality. Light pleases him; but
not gravitation, because this appears a limitation of the indi
vidual; not night, because in it man is subjected to Nature:
in the other world, there is light, but no weight, no night,
pure, unobstructed light.*

* " Neque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus ac noctibus numera-
bitur. Erit magis una dies sine vespere." Job. Damascen. (Orth. Fidei
1. ii. c. 1).

182 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in God,
always returns upon himself, always revolves round himself;
so in his utmost remoteness from the world, he always at last
comes back to it. The more extra-and suprahuman God ap
pears at the commeo cement, the more human does he show
himself to be in the subsequent course of things, or at the
close : and just so, the more supernatural the heavenly life
looks in the beginning or at a distance, the more clearly does
it, in the end or when viewed closely, exhibit its identity with
the natural life, an identity which at last extends even to the
flesh, even to the body. In the first instance the mind is
occupied with the separation of the soul from the body, as in
the conception of God the mind is first occupied with the
separation of the essence from the individual; the individual
dies a spiritual death, the dead body which remains behind is
the human individual ; the soul which has departed from it is
God. But the separation of the soul from the body, of the
essence from the individual, of God from man, must be abolished
again. Every separation of beings essentially allied is pain
ful. The soul yearns after its lost half, after its body ; as God,
the departed soul, yearns after the real man. As, therefore,
God becomes a man again, so the soul returns to its body, and
the perfect identity of this world and the other is now restored.
It is true that this new body is a bright, glorified, miraculous
body, but and this is the main point it is another and yet
the same body,* as God is another being than man, and yet the
same. Here we come again to the idea of miracle, which unites
contradictories. The supernatural body is a body constructed
by the imagination, for which very reason it is adequate to the
feelings of man ; an unburdensome, purely subjective body.
Faith in the future life is nothing else than faith in the truth
of the imagination, as faith in God is faith in the truth and
infinity of human feeling. Or : as faith in God is only faith
in the abstract nature of man, so faith in the heavenly life is
only faith in the abstract earthly life.

But the sum of the future life is happiness, the everlasting
bliss of personality, which is here limited and circumscribed by
Nature. Faith in the future life is therefore faith in the free
dom of subjectivity from the limits of Nature; it is faith in

* "Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit." Augustinus (v. J. Ch. Doe-
derlein. Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf. 1781, 280).

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 183

the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of person
ality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it for
ever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as be
longing to already existing individuals : consequently, it is the
faith of man in himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven
is one with faith in God the content of both ideas is the
same; God is pure absolute subjectivity released from all na
tural limits ; he is what individuals ought to be and will be :
faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and
truth of his own nature ; the divine being is the subjective
human being in his absolute freedom and unlimitedness.

Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have reduced
the supermundane, supernatural, and superhuman nature of God
to the elements of human nature as its fundamental elements.
Our process of analysis has brought us again to the position
with which we set out. The beginning, middle and end of
Eeligion is MAN.

END OF PART I.

184 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

PART II.

THE FALSE OE THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF KELIGION.

CHAPTEK XIX.
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF EELIGION.

THE essential stand-point of religion is the practical or sub
jective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation, the
ultimate felicity of man ; the relation of man to God is nothing
else than his relation to his own spiritual good ; God is the
realized salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of
effecting the salvation, the bliss of man.* The Christian
religion is especially distinguished from other religions in
this, that no other has given equal prominence to the
salvation of man. But this salvation is not temporal, earthly
prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, the most genuine
Christians have declared that earthly good draws man away
from God, whereas adversity, suffering, afflictions lead him
back to God, and hence are alone suited to Christians. Why?
because in trouble man is only practically or subjectively
disposed; in trouble he has recourse only to the one thing
needful; in trouble God is felt to be a want of man.
Pleasure, joy, expands man; trouble, suffering, contracts and
concentrates him ; in suffering man denies the reality of the
world ; the things that charm the imagination of the artist and
the intellect of the thinker lose their attraction for him, their
power over him; he is absorbed in himself, in his own soul.

* "Prseter salutem tuam nihil cogites; solum qua? Dei sunt cures."
Thomas a K. (de Imit. 1. i. c. 23). "Contra salutem proprium cogites nihil.
Minus dixi : contra, praeter dixisse debueram." Bernhardus (de Consid. ad
Eugenium pontif. max. 1. ii.). "Qui Deum quserit, de propria salute sollici-
tus est." Clemens Alex. (Cohort, ad Gent.).

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 185

The soul thus self-absorbed, self-concentrated, seeking satis
faction in itself alone, denying the world, idealistic in relation
to the world, to Nature in general, but realistic in relation to
man, caring only for its inherent need of salvation, this soul
is God. God, as the object of religion; and only as such is
he God, God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a
vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of
religion, not of philosophy, of feeling, not of the intellect, of
the heart's necessity, not of the mind's freedom : in short, an
object which is the reflex not of the theoretical but of the
practical tendency in man.

Keligion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing,
damnation and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth, cursed
is he that believeth not. Thus it appeals not to reason, but
to feeling, to the desire of happiness, to the passions of hope
and fear. It does not take the theoretic point of view ; other
wise it must have been free to enunciate its doctrines without
attaching to them practical consequences, without to a certain
extent compelling belief in them; for when the case stands
thus : I am lost if I do not believe, the conscience is under a
subtle kind of constraint ; the fear of hell urges me to believe.
Even supposing my belief to be in its origin free, fear inevitably
intermingles itself; my conscience is always under constraint;
doubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a
crime. And as in religion the highest idea, the highest
existence is God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the
doubt that God exists. But that which I do not trust myself
to doubt, which I cannot doubt without feeling disturbed in
my soul, without incurring guilt ; that is no matter of theory,
but a matter of conscience, no Being of the intellect, but of the
heart.

Now as the sole stand-point of religion is the practical or
subjective stand-point, as therefore to religion the whole, the
essential man is that part of his nature which is practical,
which forms resolutions, which acts in accordance with con
scious aims, whether physical or moral, and which considers
the world not in itself, but only in relation to those aims or
wants : the consequence is that everything which lies behind
the practical consciousness, but which is the essential object of
theory theory in its most original and general sense, namely,
that of objective contemplation and experience, of the intel-

18G THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

lect, of science* is regarded by religion as lying outside
man and Nature, in a special, personal being. All good, but
especially such as takes possession of man apart from his
volition, such as does not correspond with any resolution or
purpose, such as transcends the limits of the practical con
sciousness, comes from God ; all wickedness, evil, but especially
such as overtakes him against his will in the midst of his best
moral resolutions, or hurries him along with terrible violence,
comes from the devil. The scientific knowledge of the essence
of religion includes the knowledge of the devil, of Satan, of
demons. f These things cannot be omitted without a violent
mutilation of religion. Grace and its works are the antitheses
of the devil and his works. As the involuntary, sensual
impulses which flash out from the depths of the nature, and,
in general, all those phenomena of moral and physical evil
which are inexplicable to religion, appear to it as the work of
the Evil Being ; so the involuntary movements of inspiration
and ecstasy appear to it as the work of the Good Being, God,
of the Holy Spirit or of Grace. Hence the arbitrariness of
grace the complaint of the pious that grace at one time
visits and blesses them, at another forsakes and rejects them.
The life, the agency of grace, is the life, the agency of emotion.
Emotion is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which
are forsaken by divine grace, are the moments destitute of
emotion and inspiration.

In relation to the inner life, Grace may be defined as
religious -genius ; in relation to the outer life as religious
chance. Man is good or wicked by no means through him
self, his own power, his will ; but through that complete
synthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things
which, because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe
to the power of " chance." Divine grace is the power of
chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have

* Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in
which it is the source of true objective activity, the science which gives
birth to art, for man can do only so much as he knows : " tantum potest
quantum scit."

f Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, see
Liitzelherger's "Grundziige der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre," and G. Ch.
Knapp's "Tories, iiber d. Christl. Glaubensl." 6265. To this subject
belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its attestation in the Bible.
See Knapp ( 65. iii. 2, 3).

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF KELIGION. 187

again the confirmation of that which we have seen to be tfie
essential law of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance,
making everything dependent on God, explaining everything
by means of him ; but this denial is only apparent ; it merely
gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty. For the divine
will which, on incomprehensible grounds, for incomprehensible
reasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of groundless, absolute
arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as it were, determines or
predestines some to evil and misery, others to good and
happiness, has not a single positive characteristic to dis
tinguish it from the power of chance. The mystery of the
election of grace is thus the mystery of chance. I say the
mystery of chance ; for in reality chance is a mystery, although
slurred over and ignored by our speculative religious philosophy,
which, as in its occupation with the illusory mysteries of the
Absolute Being, i.e., of theology, it has overlooked the true
mysteries of thought and life, so also in the mystery of divine
grace or freedom of election, has forgotten the profane mystery
of chance.*

But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, that
springs from the nature, but not from the will ; God is the
positive, the good, which comes from the nature, but not from
the conscious action of the will; the devil is involuntary,
inexplicable wickedness ; God involuntary, inexplicable good
ness. The source of both is the same, the quality only is
different or opposite. For this reason, the belief in a devil
was, until the most recent times, intimately connected with
the belief in God, so that the denial of the devil was held to
be virtually as atheistic as the denial of God. Nor without
reason ; for when men once begin to derive the phenomena of
evil from natural causes, they at the same time begin to
derive the phenomena of good, of the divine, from the nature
of things, and come at length either to abolish the idea of
God altogether, or at least to believe in another God than the
God of religion. In this case it most commonly happens
that they make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose existence
is equivalent to non-existence, since he no longer actively

* Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination will be
pronounced atrocious, impious, diabolical. I have nothing to allege against
this ; I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in
alliance with falsehood.

188 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

interposes in life, but is merely placed at the summit of things,
at the beginning of the world, as the First Cause. God
created the world : this is all that is here retained of God.
The past tense is necessary ; for since that epoch the world
pursues its course like a machine. The addition : He still
creates, he is creating at this moment, is only the result of
external reflection; the past tense adequately expresses the
religious idea in this stage ; for the spirit of religion is gone
when the operation of God is reduced to a fecit or creavit.
It is otherwise when the genuine religious consciousness
says: The fecit is still to-day a facit. This, though here
also it is a product of reflection, has nevertheless a legitimate
meaning, because by the religious spirit God is really thought
of as active.

Religion is abolished where the idea of the world, of
so-called second causes, intrudes itself between God and
man. Here a foreign element, the principle of intellectual
culture, has insinuated itself, peace is broken, the harmony of
religion, which lies only in the immediate connexion of man
with God, is destroyed. Second causes are a capitulation
of the unbelieving intellect with the still believing heart.
It is true that, according to religion also, God works on man
by means of other things and beings. But God alone is the
cause, he alone is the active and efficient being. What a
fellow- creature does, is in the view of religion done not by
him, but by God. The other is only an appearance, a medium,
a vehicle, not a cause. But the " second cause" is a miserable
anomaly, neither an independent nor a dependent being : God,
it is true, gives the first impulse, but then ensues the spon
taneous activity of the second cause.*

Religion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, knows
nothing of the existence of second causes; on the contrary,
they are a stone of stumbling to it ; for the realm of second
causes, the sensible world, Nature, is precisely what separates
man from God, although God as a real God, i.e., an external

* A kindred doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to which,
God not only gives the first impulse, but also co-operates in the agency of
the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a particular form of
the contradictory dualism between God and Nature, which runs through
the history of Christianity. On the subject of this remark, as of the whole
paragraph, see Strauss : Die Ckristliche Glaubenslehre, B. ii. 75, 76.

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 189

being, is supposed himself to become in the other world a
sensible existence.* Hence religion believes that one day this
wall of separation will fall away. One day there will be no
Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as to separate
man from God : then there will be only God and the pious
soul. Religion derives the idea of the existence of second
causes, that is, of things which are interposed between God
and man, only from the physical, natural, and hence the
irreligious or at least non-religious theory of the universe : a
theory which it nevertheless immediately subverts by making
the operations of Nature operations of God. But this religious
idea is in contradiction with the natural sense and under
standing, which concedes a real, spontaneous activity to natural
things. And this contradiction of the physical view with the
religious theory, religion resolves by converting the undeniable
activity of things into an activity of God. Thus, on this
view, the positive idea is God ; the negative, the world.

On the contrary, where second causes, having been set in
motion, are, so to speak, emancipated, the converse occurs ;
Nature is the positive, God a negative idea. The world is
independent in its existence, its persistence ; only as to its
commencement is it dependent. God is here only a hypo
thetical Being, an inference, arising from the necessity of
a limited understanding, to which the existence of a world
viewed by it as a machine, is inexplicable without a self-
moving principle; he is no longer an original, absolutely
necessary Being. God exists not for his own sake, but for the

* " Dum sumus in hoc corpore, peregrinamur ab eo qui summe est."
Bernard. Epist. 18. (Ed. Basle, 1552). "As long as we live, we are in the
midst of death." Luther (T. i. p. 331). The idea of the future life is
therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected religion, freed from
the limits and obstructions of this life, the future life, as has been already
said, nothing but the true opinion and disposition, the open heart, of reli
gion. Here we believe; there we behold; i.e., there there is nothing
besides God, and thus nothing between God and the soul ; but only for
this reason, that there ought to be nothing between them, because the
immediate union of God and the soul is the true opinion and desire of
religion. " We have as yet so to do with God as with one hidden
from us, and it is not possible that in this life we should hold communion
with him face to face. All creatures are now nothing else than vain masks,
under which God conceals himself, and by which he deals with us."
Luther (T. xi. p. 70). " If thou wert only free from the images of created
things, thou mightest have God without intermission." Tauler (1. c. p. 313).

190 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

sake of the world, merely that he may, as a First Cause,
explain the existence of the world. The narrow rationalizing
man takes objection to the original self-subsistence of the
world, because he looks at it only from the subjective, practical
point of view, only in its commoner aspect, only as a piece of
mechanism, not in its majesty and glory, not as the Cosmos.
He conceives the world as having been launched into existence
by an original impetus, as, according to mathematical theory,
is the case with matter once set in motion and thenceforth
going on for ever : that is, he postulates a mechanical origin
A machine must have a beginning ; this is involved in its
very idea ; for it has not the source of motion in itself.

All religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as is
apparent from this example. In cosmogony man declares or
realizes the idea he has of the world ; he merely repeats what
he has already said in another form. Thus here ; if the
world is a machine, it is self-evident that it did not make
itself, that on the contrary it was created, i. e., had a me
chanical origin. Herein, it is true, the religious consciousness
agrees with the mechanical theory, that to it also the world is
a mere fabric, a product of Will. But they agree only for an
instant, only in the moment of creation ; that moment past,
the harmony ceases. The holder of the mechanical theory
needs God only as the creator of the world; once made, the
world turns its back on the creator, and rejoices in its godless
self-subsistence. But religion creates the world only to
maintain it in the perpetual consciousness of its nothingness,
its dependence on God.* To the mechanical theorist, the
creation is the last thin thread which yet ties him to religion ;
the religion to which the nothingness of the world is a
present truth, (for all power and activity is to it the power and
activity of God,) is with him only a surviving reminiscence of
youth ; hence he removes the creation of the world, the act of
religion, the non-existence of the world, (for in the beginning,
before the creation, there was no world, only God,) into the

* "Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat inseculum terra ....
et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa sub-
sistit, nee fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit earn et firrna-
mento voluntatis suse continet, quia in mami ejus omnes fines terra?."
Ambrosius (HexaBmeron. 1. i. c. 61).

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 191

far distance, into the past, while the self-subsistence of the
world, which absorbs all his senses and endeavours, acts on
him with the force of the present. The mechanical theorist
interrupts and cuts short the activity of God by the activity of
the world. With him God has indeed still an historical right,
but this is in contradiction with the right he awards to Nature;
hence he limits as much as possible the right yet remaining
to God, in order to gain wider and freer play for his natural
causes, and thereby for his understanding.

With this class of thinkers the creation holds the same
position as miracles, which also they can and actually do
acquiesce in, because miracles exist, at least according to
religious opinion. But not to say that he explains miracles
naturally, that is, mechanically, he can only digest them when
he relegates them to the past ; for the present he begs to be
excused from believing in them, and explains everything to
himself charmingly on natural principles. When a belief has
departed from the reason, the intelligence, when it is no
longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is a common
belief, or because on some ground or other it must be held ;
in short, when a belief is inwardly a past one ; then externally
also the object of the belief is referred to the past. Unbelief
thus gets breathing space, but at the same time concedes to
belief at least an historical validity. The past is here the
fortunate means of compromise between belief and unbelief:
I certainly believe in miracles, but, nota bene, in no miracles
which happen now only in those which once happened, which,
thank God ! are already plus quam perfecta. So also with
the creation. The creation is an immediate act of God, a
miracle, for there was once nothing but God. In the idea
of the creation man transcends the world, he rises into
abstraction from it ; he conceives it as non-existent in the
moment of creation ; thus he dispels from his sight what
stands between himself and God, the sensible world ; he places
himself in immediate contact with God. But the mechanical
thinker shrinks from this immediate contact with God ; hence
he at once makes the prcesens, if indeed he soars so high, into
a perfectum ; he interposes millenniums between his natural or
materialistic view and the thought of an immediate operation
of God.

To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone is the

192 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

cause of all positive effects, God alone the ultimate and also
the sole ground wherewith it answers, or rather repels all
questions which theory puts forward; for the affirmative of
religion is virtually a negative ; its answer amounts to nothing,
since it solves the most various questions always with the
same answer, making all the operations of Nature immediate
operations of God, of a designing, personal, extranatural or
supranatural Being. God is the idea which supplies the lack
of theory. The idea of God is the explanation of the in
explicable, which explains nothing because it is supposed to
explain everything without distinction ; he is the night of
theory, a night however in which everything is clear to religious
feeling, because in it the measure of darkness, the discriminating
light of the understanding, is extinct; he is the ignorance
which solves all doubt by repressing it, which knows every
thing because it knows nothing definite, because all things
which impress the intellect disappear before religion, lose their
individuality, in the eyes of divine power are nothing. Dark
ness is the mother of religion.

The essential act of religion, that in which religion puts
into action what we have designated as its essence, is prayer.
Prayer is all-powerful. What the pious soul entreats for in
prayer, God fulfils. But he prays not for spiritual gifts* alone,
which lie in some sort in the power of man ; he prays also for
things which lie out of him, which are in the power of Nature,
a power which it is the very object of prayer to overcome ;
in prayer he lays hold on a supernatural means, in order to
attain ends in themselves natural. God is to him not the
causa remota but the causa proximo,, the immediate, efficient
cause of all natural effects. All so-called secondary forces and
second causes are nothing to him when he prays; if they
were anything to him, the might, the fervour of prayer would
be annihilated. But in fact they have no existence for him ;
otherwise he would assuredly seek to attain his end only
by some intermediate process. But he desires immediate
help. He has recourse to prayer in the certainty that he can
do more, infinitely more, by prayer, than by all the efforts of
reason and all the agencies of nature, in the conviction that

* It is only unbelief in the efficacy of prayer which has subtly limited
prayer to spiritual matters.

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 193

prayer possesses superhuman and supernatural powers.* But
in prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus G-od is to him
the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the power which
realizes prayer. But an immediate act of God is a miracle ;
hence miracle is essential to the religious view. Keligion
explains everything miraculously. That miracles do not always
happen, is indeed obvious, as that man does not always pray.
But the consideration that miracles do not always happen, lies
outside the nature of religion, in the empirical or physical
mode of view only. Where religion begins, there also begins
miracle. Every true prayer is a miracle, an act of the wonder
working power. External miracles themselves only make
visible internal miracles, that is, they are only a manifestation
in time and space, and therefore as a special fact, of what in
and by itself is a fundamental position of religion, namely,
that God is, in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of
all things. The miracle of fact is only an impassioned ex
pression of religion, a moment of inspiration. Miracles
happen only in extraordinary crises, in which there is an
exaltation of the feelings : hence there are miracles of anger.
No miracle is wrought in cold blood. But it is precisely in
moments of passion that the latent nature reveals itself.
Man does not always pray with equal warmth and power.
Such prayers are therefore ineffective. Only ardent prayer
reveals the nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he regards
prayer as in itself a sacred power, a divine force. So it is
with miracles. Miracles happen no matter whether few or
many wherever there is, as a basis for them, a belief in the
miraculous. But the belief in miracle is no theoretic or
objective mode of viewing the world and Nature; miracle
realizes practical wants, and that in contradiction with the
laws which are imperative to the reason ; in miracle man
subjugates Nature, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends, which
he regards as a reality ; miracle is the superlative expression
of spiritual or religious utilitarianism ; in miracle all things

* According to the notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a coercive
power, a charm. But this conception is an unchristian one (although even
among many Christians, the idea is accepted that prayer constrains God) ;.
for in Christianity God is essentially feeling satisfied in itself, Almighty
goodness, which denies nothing to (religious) feeling. The idea of coercion
presupposes an unfeeling God.

K

194 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

are at the service of necessitous man. It is clear from this,
that the conception of the world which is essential to religion
is that of the practical or subjective stand-point, that God
for the miracle-working power is identical with God is a
purely practical or subjective being, serving however as a
substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus no object of thought,
of the knowing faculty, any more than miracle, which owes its
origin to the negation of thought. If I place myself in the
point of view of thought, of investigation, of theory, in which
I consider things in themselves, in their mutual relations,
the miracle-working being vanishes into nothing, miracle
disappears ; i. e., the religious miracle, which is absolutely dif
ferent from the natural miracle, though they are continually
interchanged, in order to stultify reason, and, under the ap
pearance of natural science, to introduce religious miracle into
the sphere of rationality and reality.

But for this very reason namely, that religion is removed
from the stand -point, from the nature of theory the true,
universal essence of Nature and humanity, which as such is
hidden from religion and is only visible to the theoretic eye,
is conceived as another, a miraculous and supernatural essence;
the idea of the species becomes the idea of God, who again
is himself an individual being, but is distinguished from human
individuals in this, that he possesses their qualities according
to the measure of the species. Hence, in religion man neces
sarily places his nature out of himself, regards his nature as a
separate nature ; necessarily, because the nature which is the
object of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious
existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God is
his alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement of
himself; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need to
him ; something is wanting to him without his knowing what
it is God is this something wanting, indispensable to him;
God belongs to his nature. The world is nothing to religion,*
the world, which is in truth the sum of all reality, is revealed
in its glory only by theory. The joys of theory are the sweetest

* " Natura. enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil est."
Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). "Omniaquse creatasunt, quamvis ea
Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tamen comparata, nee bona sunt, cui com-
parata nee sunt ; altissime quippe et proprio modo quodam de se ipso dixit :
Ego sum, qui sum." Augustinus (de Perfectione just. Horn. c. 14).

THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF EELIGION. 195

intellectual pleasures of life; but religion knows nothing of
the joys of the thinker, of the investigator of Nature, of the
artist. The idea of the universe is wanting to it, the con
sciousness of the really infinite, the consciousness of the
species. God only is its compensation for the poverty of life,
for the want of a substantial import, which the true life of
rational contemplation presents in unending fulness. God is
to religion the substitute for the lost world, God is to it in
the stead of pure contemplation, the life of theory.

That which we have designated as the practical or subjective
view is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, for therein I have
relation to a thing only for my own sake ; neither is it self-
sufficing, for it places me in relation to an object above
my own level. On the contrary, the theoretic view is joyful,
self- sufficing, happy; for here the object calls forth love and
admiration ; in the light of the free intelligence it is radiant
as a diamond, transparent as a rock-crystal. The theoretic
view is aesthetic, whereas the practical is unaesthetic. Reli
gion therefore finds in God a compensation for the want
of an aesthetic view. To the religious spirit the world is
nothing in itself ; the admiration, the contemplation of it is
idolatry ; for the world is a mere piece of mechanism.*
Hence in religion it is God that serves as the object of
pure, untainted, i. e., theoretic or esthetic contemplation.
God is the existence to which the religious man has an ob
jective relation ; in God the object is contemplated by him for
its own sake. God is an end in himself; therefore in religion
he has the significance which in the theoretic view belongs to
the object in general. The general being of theory is to
religion a special being. It is true that in religion man, in
his relation to God, has relation to his own wants as well in a
higher as in the lower sense : " Give us this day our daily
bread ;" but God can satisfy all wants of man only because he
in himself has no wants, because he is perfect blessedness.

* "Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amcenos colores amant oculi. Xon
teneant hsec animam meam; teneat eamDeus qui haec fecit, bona quidemvalde,
sed ipse est bonum meum, non haec." Augustin. (Confess. 1. x. c. 34). " Vetiti
autem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) converti ad ea quse videntur .... Amandus
igitur solus Deus est : omnis vero iste mundus, i. e. omnia seiisibilia con-
temnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus vita? necessitatem." Ib. (de Moribus
Eccl. Cathol. 1. i. c. 20).

K 2

196 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XX.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

RELIGION is the relation of man to his own nature, therein
lies its truth and its power of moral amelioration ; but to his
nature not recognised as his own, hut regarded as another
nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished from his own : herein
lies its untruth, its limitation, its contradiction to reason and
morality ; herein lies the noxious source of religious fanati
cism, the chief metaphysical principle of human sacrifices, in
a word, the prima materia of all the atrocities, all the horrible
scenes, in the tragedy of religious history.

The contemplation of the human nature as another, a se
parately existent nature, is, however, in the original conception
of religion an involuntary, childlike, simple act of the mind,
that is, one which separates God and man just as immediately
as it again identifies them. But when religion advances in
years, and, with years, in understanding ; when, within the
bosom of religion, reflection on religion is awakened, and the
consciousness of the identity of the divine being with the
human begins to dawn, in A word, when religion becomes
theology, the originally involuntary and harmless separation of
God from man, becomes an intentional, excogitated separation,
which has no other object than to banish again from the con
sciousness this identity which has already entered there.

Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer, the
more genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised; that is
to say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative or essen
tial distinction whatever between God and man. And the
religious man is not shocked at this identification; for his
understanding is still in harmony with his religion. Thus in
ancient Judaism, Jehovah was a being differing from the
human individual in nothing but in duration of existence;
in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was entirely similar to
man, had the same passions, the same human, nay, even
corporeal properties. Only in the later Judaism was Je
hovah separated in the strictest manner from man, and recourse

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 197

was had to allegory in order to give to the old anthropo
morphisms another sense than that which they originally had.
So again in Christianity : in its earliest records the divinity of
Christ is not so decidedly stamped as it afterwards hecame.
With Paul especially, Christ is still an undefined being,
hovering between heaven and earth, between God and man,
or, in general, one amongst the existences subordinate to the
highest, the first of the angels, the first created, but still
created ; begotten indeed for our sake, but then neither are
angels and men created, but begotten, for God is their Father
also. The Church first identified him with God, made him
the exclusive Son of God, defined his distinction from men
and angels, and thus gave him the monopoly of an eternal,
uncreated existence.

In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflexion on
religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct being,
and places him outside of man, is by making the existence of
God the object of a formal proof.

The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced
contradictory to the essential nature of religion. They are so ;
but only in their form as proofs. Religion immediately repre
sents the inner nature of man as an objective, external being.
And the proof aims at nothing more than to prove that religion
is right. The most perfect being is that than which no higher
can be conceived : God is the highest that man conceives or
can conceive. This premiss of the ontological proof the
most interesting proof, because it proceeds from within ex
presses the inmost nature of religion. That which is the
highest for man, from which he can make no further ab
straction, which is the positive limit of his intellect, of his
feeling, of his sentiment, that is to him God id quo nihil
majus cogitari potest. But this highest being would not be
the highest if he did not exist; we could then conceive a higher
being who would be superior to him in the fact of existence ;
the idea of the highest being directly precludes this fiction.
Not to exist is a deficiency ; to exist is perfection, happiness,
bliss. From a being to whom man gives all, offers up all that
is precious to him, he cannot withhold the bliss of existence.
The contradiction to the religious spirit in the proof of the
existence of God lies only in this, that the existence is thought
of separately, and thence arises the appearance that God is a
mere conception, a being existing in idea only, an appearance

198 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

however which is immediately dissipated ; for the very result
of the proof is, that to God belongs an existence distinct from
an ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought,
a real self-existence.

The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the
spirit of religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the
implicit enthyineme or immediate conclusion of religion, ex
hibits in logical relation, and therefore distinguishes, what
religion immediately unites; for to religion God is not a
matter of abstract thought, he is a present truth and reality.
But that every religion in its idea of God makes a latent, un
conscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against other
religions. " Ye heathens," says the Jew or the Christian,
" were able to conceive nothing higher as your deities because
ye were sunk in sinful desires. Your God rests on a conclu
sion, the premisses of which are your sensual impulses, your
passions. You thought thus: the most excellent life is, to
live out one's impulses without restraint ; and because this life
was the most excellent, the truest, you made it your God.
Your God was your carnal nature, your heaven only a free
theatre for the passions which, in society and in the conditions
of actual life generally, had to suffer restraint." But, naturally,
in relation to itself no religion is conscious of such an infer
ence, for the highest of which it is capable is its limit, has the
force of necessity, is not a thought, not a conception, but
immediate reality.

The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to
make the internal external, to separate it from man.* His
existence being proved, God is no longer a merely relative,
but a noumenal being (Ding an sicli) : he is not only a
being for us, a being in our faith, our feeling, our nature, he
is a being in himself, a being external to us, in a word, not
merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real existence
apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But such an existence
is no other than a sensational existence; i.e., an existence con
ceived according to the forms of our senses.

* At the same time, however, their result is, to prove the nature of man.
The various proofs of the existence of God are nothing else than various
highly interesting forms in which the human nature affirms itself. Thus,
for example, the plrysico-theological proof (or proof from design) is the self-
affirmation of the calculated activity of the understanding. Every philo
sophic system is, in this sense, a proof of the existence of God.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 199

The idea of sensational existence is indeed already involved in
the characteristic expression "external to us." It is true that a
sophistical theology refuses to interpret the word " external" in
its proper, natural sense, and substitutes the indefinite expres
sion of independent, separate existence. But if the externality
is only figurative, the existence also is figurative. And yet
we are here only concerned with existence in the proper sense,
and external existence is nlone the definite, real, unshrinking
expression for separate existence.

Real, sensational existence is that which is not dependent on
my own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I am
involuntarily affected, which is when I am not, when I do not
think of it or feel it. The existence of God must therefore be
in space in general, a qualitative, sensational existence. But
God is not seen, not heard, not perceived by the senses. He
does not exist for me, if I do not exist for him ; if I do not believe
in a God, there is no God for me. If I am not devoutly dis
posed, if I do not raise myself above the life of the senses, he
has no place in my consciousness. Thus he exists only in so
far as he is felt, thought, believed in ; the addition " for me" is
unnecessary. His existence therefore is a real one, yet at the
same time not a real one ; a spiritual existence, says the theo
logian. But spiritual existence is only an existence in thought,
in feeling, in belief: so that his existence is a medium between
sensational existence and conceptional existence, a medium full
of contradiction. Or : he is a sensational existence, to which
however all the conditions of sensational existence are wanting :
consequently an existence at once sensational and not sensa
tional, an existence which contradicts the idea of the sensational,
or only a vague existence in general, which is fundamentally a
sensational one, but which, in order that this may not become
evident, is divested of all the predicates of a real, sensational
existence. But such an " existence in general" is self-contra
dictory. To existence belongs full, definite reality.

A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism.
The existence of God is essentially an empirical existence,
without having its distinctive marks ; it is in itself a matter of
experience, and yet in reality no object of experience. It calls
upon man to seek it in Reality : it impregnates his mind with
sensational conceptions and pretensions ; hence, when these are
not fulfilled when, on the contrary, he finds experience in con-

200 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

tradiction with these conceptions, he is perfectly justified in
denying that existence.

Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of the
proofs of the existence of God, that that existence is not sus-
ceptihle of proof from reason. He did not merit, on this
account, the blame which was cast on him by Hegel. The
idea of the existence of God in those proofs is a thoroughly
empirical one ; but I cannot deduce empirical existence from
an a priori idea. The only real ground of blame against Kant
is, that in laying down this position he supposed it to be some
thing remarkable, whereas it is self-evident. Keason cannot
constitute itself an object of sense. I cannot, in thinking, at
the same time represent what I think as a sensible object,
external to me. The proof of the existence of God transcends
the limits of the reason; true ; but in the same sense in which
sight, hearing, smell transcend the limits of the reason. It is
absurd to reproach reason, that it does not satisfy a demand
which can only address itself to the senses. Existence, em
pirical existence, is proved to me by the senses alone; and in
the question as to the being of God, the existence implied has
not the significance of inward reality, of truth, but the signi
ficance of a formal, external existence. Hence there is perfect
truth in the allegation, that the belief that God is or is not
has no consequence with respect to inward moral dispositions.
It is true that the thought there is a God, is inspiring ; but
here the is means inward reality ; here the existence is a
movement of inspiration, an act of aspiration. Just in
proportion as this existence becomes a prosaic, an empirical
truth, the inspiration is extinguished.

Eeligion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the existence
of God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference to the
inward disposition. As, necessarily, in the religious cultus,
ceremonies, observances, sacraments, apart from the moral spirit
or disposition, become in themselves an important fact : so also,
at last, belief in the existence of God becomes, apart from the
inherent quality, the spiritual import of the idea of God, a chief
point in religion. If thou only believest in God believest that
God is, thou art already saved. Whether under this God thou
conceivest a really divine being or a monster, a Nero or a Cali
gula, an image of thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition, it is
all one, the main point is that thou be not an atheist. The
history of religion has amply confirmed this consequence which

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 201

we here draw from the idea of the divine existence. If the exist
ence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted itself as a religious
truth in minds, there would never have been those infamous,
senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatize the history
of religion and theology. The existence of God was a common,
external, and yet at the same time a holy thing : what wonder,
then, if on this ground the commonest, rudest, most unholy
conceptions and opinions sprang up !

Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be
the negation of all moral principle, of all moral foundations
and bonds : if God is not, all distinction between good and
bad, virtue and vice, is abolished. Thus the distinction lies
only in the existence of God ; the reality of virtue lies not in
itself, but out of it. And assuredly it is not from an attach
ment to virtue, from a conviction of its intrinsic worth and im
portance, that the reality of it is thus bound up with the ex
istence of God. On the contrary, the belief that God is the
necessary condition of virtue, is the belief in the nothingness of
virtue in itself.

It is indeed worthy of remark, that the idea of the empirical
existence of God has been perfectly developed in modern
times, in which empiricism and materialism in general
have arrived at their full blow. It is true that even in the
original, simple religious mind, God is an empirical existence
to be found in a place, though above the earth. But here
this conception has not so naked, so prosaic a significance;
the imagination identifies again the external God with the
soul of man. The imagination is, in general, the true place of
an existence which is absent, not present to the senses, though
nevertheless sensational in its essence.* Only the imagina
tion solves the contradiction in an existence which is at once
sensational and not sensational; only the imagination is the

* " Christ is ascended on high that is, he not only sits there

above, but he is also here below. And lie is gone thither to the very end
that he might be here below, and fill all things, and be in all places, which
he could not do while on earth, for here he could not be seen by all bodily
eyes. Therefore he sits above, where every man can see him, and he has to
do with every man." Luther (T. xiii. p. 643). That is to say : Christ or
God is an object, an existence, of the imagination; in the imagination he is
limited to no place, he is present and objective to every one. God exists
in heaven, but is for that reason omnipresent; for this heaven is the
imagination.

K 3

202 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

preservative from atheism. In the imagination, existence has
sensational effects, existence affirms itself as a power; with the
essence of sensational existence the imagination associates also
the phenomena of sensational existence. Where the existence
of God is a living truth, an object on which the imagination
exercises itself, there also appearances of God are helieved in.*
Where, on the contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is
extinct, where the sensational effects or appearances necessarily
connected with an essentially sensational existence cease, there
the existence becomes a dead, self- contradictory existence, which
falls irrecoverably into the negation of atheism.

The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special
existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature.
A special existence can only be proved in a special manner.
This faith is therefore only then a true and living one when
special effects, immediate appearances of God, miracles, are
believed in. Where, on the other hand, the belief in God is
identified with the belief in the world, where the belief in God
is no longer a special faith, where the general being of the
world takes possession of the whole man, there also vanishes
the belief in special effects and appearances of God. Be
lief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the belief in the world,
in natural effects as the only true ones. As here the belief in
miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in his
torical, past miracles, so the existence of God is also only an
historical, in itself atheistic conception.

* " Thou hast not to complain that thou art less experienced than was

Abraham or Isaac. Thou also hast appearances Thou hast holy

baptism, the supper of the Lord, the bread and wine, which are figures and
forms, under and in which the present God speaks to thee, and acts upon

thee, in thy ears, eyes, and heart He appears to thee in baptism,

and it is he himself who baptizes thee, and speaks to thee Every
thing is full of divine appearances and utterances, if he is on thy side."-
Luther (T. ii. p. 466. See also on this subject, T. xix. p. 407).

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 203

CHAPTER XXI.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EEVELATION OF GOD.

WITH the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea of
revelation. God's attestation of his existence, the authentic
testimony that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn from
reason are merely- subj ective ; the objective, the only true proof
of the existence of God, is his revelation. God speaks to man ;
revelation is the word of God ; he sends forth a voice which
thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful certainty that God really
is. The word is the gospel of life, the criterion of existence
and non-existence. Belief in revelation is the culminating
point of religious objectivism. The subjective conviction of
the existence of God here becomes an indubitable, external,
historical fact. The existence of God, in itself, considered
simply as existence, is already an external, empirical existence ;
still, it is as yet only thought, conceived, and therefore doubt
ful ; hence the assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory
certainty. This conceptional existence converted into a real
existence, a fact, is revelation. God has revealed himself, has
demonstrated himself: who then can have any further doubt?
The certainty of the existence of God is involved for me in the
certainty of the revelation. A God who only exists without
revealing himself, who exists for me only through my own
mental act, such a God is a merely abstract, imaginary, subjec
tive God ; a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through
his own act is alone a God who truly exists, who proves him
self to exist, an objective God. Faith in revelation is the
immediate certainty of the religious mind, that what it believes,
wishes, conceives, really is. Religion is a dream, in which our
own conceptions and emotions appear to us as separate exist
ences, beings out of ourselves. The religious mind does not
distinguish between subjective and objective, it has no doubts;
it has the faculty, not of discerning other things than itself,
but of seeing its own conceptions out of itself, as distinct beings.
What is in itself a mere theory, is to the religious mind a prac
tical belief, a matter of conscience, a fact. A fact is that

204 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

which from being an object of the intellect becomes a matter
of conscience; a fact is that which one cannot criticise or
attack without being guilty of a crime ;* a fact is that which
one must believe nolens volens; a fact is a physical force, not
an argument, it makes no appeal to the reason. O ye short
sighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling at our
heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun our
reason and make us the slaves of your childish superstition,
do you not see that facts are just as relative, as various, as
subjective, as the ideas of the different religions ? Were not
the Gods of Olympus also facts, self -attesting existences ?f
Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism regarded as facts ?
Were not angels and demons historical persons ? Did they
not really appear to men ? Did not Balaam's ass really speak?
Was not the story of Balaam's ass just as much believed even
by enlightened scholars of the last century, as the Incarnation
or any other miracle ? A fact, I repeat, is a conception about
the truth of which there is no doubt, because it is no object of
theory, but of feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it
believes, should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is
forbidden, if not by an external law, yet by an internal one.
A fact is every possibility which passes for a reality, every
conception which, for the age wherein it is held to be a fact,
expresses a want, and is for that reason an impassable limit of
the mind. A fact is every wish that projects itself on reality:
in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply because it
is not must not be doubted.

* The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference ; it is something
morally evil, a disowning of what is known to be true. Christianity made
its articles of faith objective, i. e., undeniable, unassailable facts, thus
overpowering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force of
external reality: herein we have the true explanation why and how
Christianity, Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with
all solemnity the principle, that heresy the denial of an idea or a fact
which forms an article of faith is an object of punishment by the tempo
ral power, *. e., a crime. What in theory is an external fact, becomes in
practice an external force. In this respect, Christianity is far below Maho-
medanism, to which the crime of heresy is unknown.

f " Prsesentiam ssepe divi suam declarant." Cicero (de Nat. D. 1. ii.).
Cicero's works (de Nat. D. and de Divinatione) are especially interesting, be
cause the arguments there used for the reality of the objects of pagan faith,
are virtually the same as those urged in the present day by theologians
and the adherents of positive religion generally, for the reality of the objects
of Christian faith.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 205

The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto un
folded, has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary,
spontaneous affections are impressions from without, manifes
tations of another being. The religious mind makes itself the
passive, God the active being. God is activity; but that
which determines him to activity, which causes his activity
(originally only omnipotence, potentia) to become real activity,
is not himself, he needs nothing, but man, the religious sub
ject. At the same time, however, man is reciprocally deter
mined by God ; he views himself as passive ; he receives from
God determinate revelations, determinate proofs of his exist
ence. Thus in revelation man determines himself as that which
determines God, i.e., revelation is simply the self-determination
of man, only that between himself the determined, and himself
the determining, he interposes an object God, a distinct being.
God is the medium by which man brings about the reconcili
ation of himself with his own nature : God is the bond, the
vinculiim substantiate, between the essential nature the species
and the individual.

The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the
characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The
general premiss of this belief is : man can of himself know
nothing of God ; all his knowledge is merely vain, earthly,
human. But God is a superhuman being ; God is known only
by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond what he
reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine,
superhuman, supernatural knowledge. By means of revelation,
therefore, we know God through himself; for revelation is the
word of God God declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in
revelation man makes himself a negation, he goes out of and
above himself ; he places revelation in opposition to human
knowledge and opinion ; in it is contained a hidden knowledge,
the fulness of all supersensuous mysteries ; here reason must
hold its peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is deter
mined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or
angels, but to men ; hence he uses human speech and human
conceptions. Man is an object to God, before God perceptibly
imparts himself to man ; he thinks of man ; he determines his
action in accordance with the nature of man and his needs.
God is indeed free in will ; he can reveal himself or not ; but
he is not free as to the understanding ; he cannot reveal to man
whatever he will, but only what is adapted to man, what is com-

206 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

mensurate with his nature such as it actually is ; he reveals
what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be a revelation for
man, and not for some other kind of being. Now what God
thinks in relation to man is determined by the idea of man it
has arisen out of reflection on human nature. Go'd puts him
self in the place of man, and thinks of himself as this other
being can and should think of him ; he thinks of himself, not
with his own thinking power, but with man's. In the scheme
of his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but to
man's power of comprehension. That which comes from God
to man, comes to man only from man in God, that is, only
from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from the
species to the individual. Thus, between the divine revelation
and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other
than an illusory distinction ; the contents of the divine reve
lation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from
God as God, but from God as determined by human reason,
human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human
wants. And so in revelation man goes out of himself, in
order, by a circuitous path, to return to himself! Here we have
a striking confirmation of the position, that the secret of theo
logy is nothing else than anthropology the knowledge of God
nothing else than a knowledge of man !

Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in relation
to past times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The
religious consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with
a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink
from becoming visible as such. It recognises that those were
merely images in which God accommodated himself to the com
prehension of men in that age, that is, merely human images.
But it does not apply this mode of interpretation to ideas ac
cepted as revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself
steeped in those ideas. Nevertheless, every revelation is simply
a revelation of the nature of man to existing men. In revela
tion man's latent nature is disclosed to him, becomes an object
to him. He is determined, affected by his own nature as by
another being ; he receives from the hands of God what his
own unrecognised nature entails upon him as a necessity, under
certain conditions of time and circumstance. Keason, the mind
of the species, operates on the subjective, uncultured man only
under the image of a personal being. Moral laws have force
for him only as the commandments of a Divine Will, which has

THE CONTKADICTION IN THE KEVELATION OF GOD. 207

at once the power to punish and the glance which nothing
escapes. That which his own nature, his reason, his conscience
says to him, does not bind him, because the subjective, un
cultured man sees in conscience, in reason, so far as he
recognises it as his own, no universal, objective power; hence
he must separate from himself that which gives him moral laws,
and place it in opposition to himself, as a distinct personal
being.

Belief in revelation is a child-like belief, and is only respect
able so long as it is child-like. But the child is determined
fiom without. And revelation has for its object to effect by
God's help, what man cannot attain by himself. Hence, reve
lation has been called the education of the human race. This
is correct ; only, revelation must not be regarded as outside the
nature of man. There is within him an inward necessity which
impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the
form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to repre
sent that impulse as a revelation. The mythical poet has an
end in view that of making men good and wise ; he designedly
adopts the form of fable as the most appropriate and vivid
method of representation ; but at the same time, he is himself
urged to this mode of teaching by his love of fable, by his in
ward impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated by an in
dividual. This individual has an aim ; but at the same time
he himself lives in the conceptions by means of which he
realizes this aim. Man, by means of the imagination, involun
tarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out
of himself. The nature of man, of the species thus working
on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and
contemplated as the law of his thought and action is God.

Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in reve
lation.

But as Nature " unconsciously produces results which look
as if they were produced consciously," so revelation generates
moral actions, which do not, however, proceed from morality ;
moral actions, but no moral dispositions. Moral rules are
indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposi
tion, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of
an external law-giver, by being placed in the category of arbi
trary laws, police regulations. What is done, is done not
because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by
God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent ; what-

208 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ever God commands is right.* If these commands are in ac
cordance with reason, with ethics, it is well ; but so far as the
idea of revelation is concerned, it is accidental. The ceremo
nial laws of the Jews were revealed, divine, though in them
selves adventitious and arbitrary. The Jews received from
Jehovah the command to steal ; in a special case, it is true.

But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral sense
and taste, the esthetics of virtue ; it poisons, nay it destroys,
the divinest feeling in man the sense of truth, the perception
and sentiment of truth. The revelation of God is a determinate
revelation, given at a particular epoch : God revealed himself
once for all in the year so and so, and that, not to the universal
man, to the man of all times and places, to the reason, to the
species, but to certain limited individuals. A revelation in a
given time and place must be fixed in writing, that its blessings
may be transmitted uninjured. Hence the belief in revelation
is, at least for those of a subsequent age, belief in a written
revelation ; but the necessary consequence of a faith in which
an historical book, necessarily subject to all the conditions of a
temporal, finite production, is regarded as an eternal, absolute,
universally authoritative word, is superstition and sophistry.

Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so far
respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the sacred
\vritings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on the con
trary, the distinction is made between the human and divine,
the relatively true and the absolutely true, the historical and
the permanent, where it is not held that all without distinc
tion is unconditionally true ; there the verdict of unbelief,
that the Bible is no divine book, is already introduced into the
interpretation of the Bible, there, at least indirectly, that is,
in a crafty, dishonest way, its title to the character of a divine
revelation is denied. Unity, unconditionality, freedom from
exceptions, immediate certitude, is alone the character of
divinity. A book that imposes on me the necessity of discri
mination, the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the

* " Quod crudeliter ab hominibus sine Dei jussu fieret aut factum est, id
debuit ab Hebrais fieri, quia a deo vitse et necis summo arbitrio, jussi bellum
ita gerebant." J. Clericus (Comm. in Mos. Num. c. 31, 7). " Multa gessit
Samson, quse vix possent defend!, nisi Dei, a quo homines pendent, instru-
mentum fuisse censeatur." Ib. (Comm. in Judicum, c. 14, 19). See also
Luther, e. g. (T. i. p. 339, T. xvi. p. 495).

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 209

divine from the human, the permanent from the temporary, is
no longer a divine, certain, infallible book, it is degraded to
the rank of profane books ; for every profane book has the
same quality, that together with or in the human it contains
the divine, that is, together with or in the individual it con
tains the universal and eternal. But that only is a truly divine
book in which there is not merely something good and some
thing bad, something permanent and something temporary, but
in which all comes as it were from one crucible, all is eternal,
true and good. What sort of a revelation is that in which I
must first listen to the apostle Paul, then to Peter, then to
James, then to John, then to Matthew, then to Mark, then
to Luke, until at last I come to a passage where my soul,
athirst for God, can cry out : EUREKA ! here speaks the Holy
Spirit himself! here is something for me, something for all
times and all men. How true, on the contrary, was the con
ception of the old faith, when it extended inspiration to the
very words, to the very letters of Scripture ! The word is not a
matter of indifference in relation to the thought; a definite
thought can only be rendered by a definite word. Another
word, another letter another sense. It is true that such faith
is superstition ; but this superstition is alone the true, undis
guised, open faith, which is not ashamed of its consequences.
If God numbers the hairs on the head of a man, if no sparrow
falls to the ground without his will, how could he leave to the
stupidity and caprice of scribes his Word that word on which
depends the everlasting salvation of man ? Why should he not
dictate his thoughts to their pen in order to guard them from
the possibility of disfiguration ? " But if man were a mere
organ of the Holy Spirit, human freedom would be abolished!"*
Oh what a pitiable argument ! Is human freedom, then, of
more value than divine truth ? Or does human freedom con
sist only in the distortion of divine truth ?

And just as necessarily as the belief in a determinate histori
cal revelation is associated with superstition, so necessarily is it

* It was very justly remarked by the Jansenists against the Jesuits :
" Vouloir reconnoitre dans 1'Ecriture quelque chose de la foiblesse et de
1'esprit naturel de 1'homme, c'est donner la liberte a chacun d'eii faire le
discemement et de rejetter ce qui lui plaira de 1'Ecriture, comme venant
plutot de la foiblesse de 1'homme que de 1'esprit de Dieu." Bayle (Diet. art.
Adam (Jean) Eem. E.)

210 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

associated with sophistry. The Bible contradicts morality,
contradicts reason, contradicts itself, innumerable times; and
yet it is the word of God, eternal truth, and " truth cannot
contradict itself."* How does the believer in revelation elude
this contradiction between the idea in his own mind, of revela
tion as divine, harmonious truth, and this supposed actual
revelation? Only by self-deception, only by the silliest subter
fuges, only by the most miserable, transparent sophisms.
Christian sophistry is the necessary product of Christian faith,
especially of faith in the Bible as a divine revelation.

Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the Bible, sub
jectively in faith; for towards that which God himself speaks I
can only be believing, resigned, receptive. Nothing is left to
the understanding, the reason, but a formal, subordinate office ;
it has a false position, a position essentially contradictory to
its nature. The understanding in itself is here indifferent to
truth, indifferent to the distinction between the true and the
false; it has no criterion in itself; whatever is found in reve
lation is true, even when it is in direct contradiction with
reason. The understanding is helplessly given over to the hap
hazard of the most ignoble empiricism ; whatever I find in
divine revelation I must believe, and if necessary, my under
standing must defend it ; the understanding is the watch-dog
of revelation ; it must let everything without distinction be
imposed on it as truth, discrimination would be doubt, would
be a crime : consequently, nothing remains to it but an ad
ventitious, indifferent, i. e., disingenuous, sophistical, tortuous
mode of thought, which is occupied only with groundless
distinctions and subterfuges, with ignominious tricks and
evasions. But the more man, by the progress of time, becomes
estranged from revelation, the more the understanding ripens
into independence, the more glaring, necessarily, appears the
contradiction between the understanding and belief in revela
tion. The believer can then prove revelation only by incurring
contradiction with himself, with truth, with the understanding,
only by the most impudent assumptions, only by shameless
falsehoods, only by the sin against the Holy Ghost.

* "Nee in scriptura divina fas sit sentire aliquid contrarietatis." Petrus
L. (1. ii. dist. ii. c. i.). Similar thoughts are found in the Fathers.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 211

CHAPTEK XXII.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD
IN GENERAL.

THE grand principle, the central point of Christian sophistry,
is the idea of God. God is the human being, and yet he must
be regarded as another, a superhuman being. God is universal,
abstract Being, simply the idea of Being ; and yet he must be
conceived as a personal, individual being ; or God is a person,
and yet he must be regarded as God, as universal, i.e., not as
a personal being. God is ; his existence is certain, more certain
than ours ; he has an existence distinct from us and from things
in general, i.e., an individual existence ; and yet his existence
must be held a spiritual one, i.e., an existence not perceptible
as a special one. One half of the definition is always in con
tradiction with the other half: the statement of what must be
held always annihilates the statement of what is. The funda
mental idea is a contradiction which can be concealed only by
sophisms. A God who does not trouble himself about us, who
does not hear our prayers, who does not see us and love us, is
no God ; thus humanity is made an essential predicate of
God ; but at the same time it is said : a God who does not
exist in and by himself, out of men, above men, as another
being, is a phantom ; and thus it is made an essential predicate
of God that he is non-human and extra-human. A. God who
is not as we are, who has not consciousness, not intelligence,
i.e., not a personal understanding, a personal consciousness, (as,
for example, the "substance" of Spinoza,) is no God. Essential
identity with us is the chief condition of deity; the idea of deity
is made dependent on the idea of personality, of consciousness,
quo niliil majus cogitari potest. But, it is said in the same
breath, a God who is not essentially distinguished from us is
no God.

The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, un^
conscious contemplation of the human nature as another, a
distinct nature. But when this projected image of human

212 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nature is made an object of reflection, of theology, it becomes
an inexhaustible mine of falsehoods, illusions, contradictions,
and sophisms.

A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of Christian
sophistry is the doctrine of the unsearchableness, the in
comprehensibility of the divine nature. But, as will be shown,
the secret of this incomprehensibility is nothing further than
that a known quality is made into an unknown one, a natural
quality into a supernatural, i.e., an unnatural one, so as to
produce the appearance, the illusion, that the divine nature
is different from the human, and is eo ipso an incompre
hensible one.

In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensibility of
God has only the significance of an impassioned expression.
Thus, when we are affected by a surprising phenomenon, we
exclaim : It is incredible, it is beyond conception ! though
afterwards, when we recover our self-possession, we find the
object of our astonishment nothing less than incomprehensible.
In the truly religious sense, incomprehensibility is not the
dead full stop which reflection places wherever understanding
deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation marking the im
pression which the imagination makes on the feelings. The
imagination is the original organ of religion. Between God
and man, in the primitive sense of religion, there is on the one
hand only a distinction in relation to existence, according to
which God as a self- sub sistent being is the antithesis of man
as a dependent being; on the other hand there is only a
quantitative distinction, i.e., a distinction derived from the
imagination, for the distinctions of the imagination are only
quantitative. The infinity of God in religion is quantitative
infinity; God is and has all that man has, but in an infinitely
greater measure. The nature of God is the nature of the
imagination unfolded, made objective.* God is a being con
ceived under the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits
of sense, a being at once unlimited and sensational. But
what is the imagination ? limitless activity of the senses. God

* This is especially apparent in the superlative, and the preposition
super, vTTfp, which distinguish the divine predicates, and which very early
as, for example, with the Neo-Platonists, the Christians among heathen
philosophers played a chief part in theology.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 213

is eternal, i.e., he exists at all times; God is omnipresent, i.e., he
exists in all places ; God is the omniscient being, i.e., the being
to whom every individual thing, every sensible existence, is
an object without distinction, without limitation of time and
place.

Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, for in
them there is no negation of existence in time and space, but
only of exclusive limitation to a particular time, to a particular
place. In like manner omniscience is a sensational quality,
a sensational knowledge. Eeligion has no hesitation in attri
buting to God himself the nobler senses : God sees and hears
all things. But the divine omniscience is a power of knowing
through the senses while yet the necessary quality, the essen
tial determination of actual knowledge through the senses is
denied to it. My senses present sensible objects to me only
separately and in succession ; but God sees all sensible things
at once, all locality in an unlocal manner, all temporal things
in an untemporal manner, all objects of sense in an unsensa-
tional manner.* That is to say : I extend the horizon of my
senses by the imagination ; I form to myself a confused con
ception of the whole of things ; and this conception, which
exalts me above the limited stand-point of the senses, and
therefore affects me agreeably, I posit as a divine reality. I
feel the fact that my knowledge is tied to a local stand-point,
to sensational experience, as a limitation; what I feel as a
limitation I do away with in my imagination, which furnishes
free space for the play of my feelings. This negativing of
limits by the imagination is the positing of omniscience as a
divine power and reality. But at the same time there is only
a quantitative distinction between omniscience and my know
ledge; the quality of the knowledge is the same. In fact it
would be impossible for me to predicate omniscience of an
object or being external to myself, if this omniscience were
essentially different from my own knowledge, if it were not a
mode of perception of my own, if it had nothing in common
with my own power of cognition. That which is recognised
by the senses is as much the object and content of the divine

* "Scit itaque Deus, quanta sit multitude pulicum, culicum, muscarum et
piscium et quot nascantur, quotve moriantur, sed non scit hoc per momenta
singula, imo simul et semel omnia." Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 39. c. 3).

214 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

omniscience as of my knowledge. Imagination does away only
with the limit of quantity, not of quality. The proposition
that our knowledge is limited, means : we know only some
things, a few things, not all.

The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension
of the sensational consciousness. In religion man is in the
open air, sub deo; in the sensational consciousness he is in
his narrow confined dwelling-house. Religion has relation
essentially, originally and only in its origin is it something
holy, true, pure, and good to the immediate sensational con
sciousness alone ; it is the setting aside of the limits of sense.
Isolated, uninstructed men and nations preserve religion in
its original sense, because they themselves remain in that
mental state which is the source of religion. The more
limited a man's sphere of vision, the less he knows of history,
Nature, philosophy the more ardently does he cling to his
religion.

For this reason the religious man feels no need of culture.
Why had the Hebrews no art, no science, as the Greeks had ?
Because they felt no need of it. To them this need was sup
plied by Jehovah. In the divine omniscience man raises him
self above the limits of his own knowledge;* in the divine
omnipresence, above the limits of his local stand-point; in the
divine eternity, above the limits of his time. The religious
man is happy in his imagination ; he has all things in mice ;
his possessions are always portable. Jehovah accompanies
me everywhere ; I need not travel out of myself; I have in my
God the sum of all treasures and precious things, of all that is
worth knowledge and remembrance. But culture is dependent
on external things; it has many and various wants, for it
overcomes the limits of sensational consciousness and life by
real activity, not by the magical power of the religious imagi
nation. Hence the Christian religion also, as has been often
mentioned already, has in its essence no principle of culture,
for it triumphs over the limitations and difficulties of earthly
life only through the imagination, only in God, in heaven.
God is all that the heart needs and desires all good things,
all blessings. "Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness, or

* " Qui scientem ctmcta sciunt, quid nescire nequeunt ?" Liber Meditat.
c. 26 (among the spurious writings of Augustine).

THE CONTKADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 215

truth, or consolation, or perpetual presence, this is always in
Him without measure. Dost thou desire beauty He is the
supremely beautiful. Dost thou desire riches all riches are
in Him. Dost thou desire power He is supremely powerful.
Or whatever thy heart desires, it is found a thousandfold in
Him, in the best, the single good, which is God."* But how
can he who has all in God, who already enjoys heavenly bliss
in the imagination, experience that want, that sense of poverty,
which is the impulse to all culture? Culture has no other
object than to realize an earthly heaven; and the religious
heaven is only realized or won by religious activity.

The difference, however, between God and man, which is
originally only quantitative, is by reflection developed into a
qualitative difference; and thus what was originally only an
emotional impression, an immediate expression of admiration,
of rapture, an influence of the imagination on the feelings, has
fixity given to it as an objective quality, as real incomprehen
sibility. The favourite expression of reflection in relation to
this subject is, that we can indeed know concerning God that
he has such and such attributes, but not hoiv he has them.
For example, that the predicate of the Creator essentially
belongs to God, that he created the world, and not out of
matter already existing, but out of nothing, by an act of
almighty power, this is clear, certain yes, indubitable; but
how this is possible naturally passes our understanding. That
is to say : the generic idea is clear, certain, but the specific
idea is unclear, uncertain.

The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a
divine idea; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God.
In activity, man feels himself free, unlimited, happy ; in pas
sivity, limited, oppressed, unhappy. Activity is the positive
sense of one's personality. That is positive which in man is
accompanied with joy; hence God is, as we have already said,
the idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed only in what we
do willingly; joyful effort conquers all things. But that is
joyful activity which is in accordance with our nature,
which we do not feel as a limitation, and consequently
not as a constraint. And the happiest, the most blissful
activity is that which is productive. To read is delightful,

* Tauler, 1. c. p. 312,

216 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

reading is passive activity ; but to produce what is worthy
to be read is more delightful still. It is more blessed to
give than to receive. Hence this attribute of the species
productive activity is assigned to God ; that is, realized and
made objective as divine activity. But every special determi
nation, every mode of activity is abstracted, and only the
fundamental determination, which however is essentially
human, namely, production of what is external to self, is re
tained. God has not, like man, produced something in parti
cular, this or that, but all things ; his activity is absolutely
universal, unlimited. Hence it is self-evident, it is a necessary
consequence, that the mode in which God has produced the
All is incomprehensible, because this activity is no mode of
activity, because the question concerning the how is here an
absurdity, a question which is excluded by the fundamental
idea of unlimited activity. Every special activity produces its
effects in a special manner, because there the activity itself is
a determinate mode of activity ; and thence necessarily arises
the question : How did it produce this ? But the answer to the
question: How did God make the world? has necessarily a
negative issue, because the world- creating activity in itself
negatives every determinate activity, such as would alone
warrant the question, every mode of activity connected with a
determinate medium, i.e., with matter. This question illegiti
mately foists in between the subject or producing activity, and
the object or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, an excluded
intermediate idea, namely, the idea of particular, individual
existence. The activity in question has relation only to the
collective the All, the world; God created all things, not
some particular thing ; the indefinite whole, the All, as it is
embraced by the imagination, not the determinate, the parti
cular, as, in its particularity, it presents itself to the senses, and
as, in its totality as the universe, it presents itself to the reason.
Every particular thing arises in a natural way ; it is something
determinate, and as such it has what it is only tautology to
state a determinate cause. It was not God, but carbon, that
produced the diamond ; a given salt owes its origin, not to
God, but to the combination of a particular acid with a par
ticular base. God only created all things together without
distinction.

It is true that according to the religious conception, God has
created every individual thing, as included in the whole ; but

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 217

only indirectly; for he has not -produced the individual in an
individual manner, the determinate in a determinate manner ;
otherwise he would be a determinate or conditioned being.
It is certainly incomprehensible how out of this general,
indeterminate or unconditioned activity the particular, the
determinate, can have proceeded; but it is so only because I
here intrude the object of sensational, natural experience,
because I assign to the divine activity another object than
that which is proper to it. Religion has no physical con
ception of the world; it has no interest in a natural expla
nation, which can never be given but with a mode of origin.
Origin is a theoretical, natural-philosophical idea. The
heathen philosophers busied themselves with the origin of
things. But the Christian religious consciousness abhorred
this idea as heathen, irreligious, and substituted the practical
or subjective idea of Creation, which is nothing else than a
prohibition to conceive things as having arisen in a natural
way, an interdict on all physical science. The religious con
sciousness connects the world immediately with God ; it derives
all from God, because nothing is an object to him in its par
ticularity and reality, nothing is to him as it presents itself to
our reason. All proceeds from God : that is enough, that
perfectly satisfies the religious consciousness. The question,
how did God create ? is an indirect doubt that he did create the
world. It was this question which brought man to atheism,
materialism, naturalism. To him who asks it, the world is
already an object of theory, of physical science, i. e., it is an
object to him in its reality, in its determinate constituents. It
is this mode of viewing the world which contradicts the idea
of unconditioned, immaterial activity : and this contradiction
leads to the negation of the fundamental idea the creation.

The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth, only
when all the phenomena of the world are derived from God.
It becomes, as has been already observed, a myth of past
ages where physical science introduces itself, where man makes
the determinate causes, the how of phenomena, the object of
investigation. To the religious consciousness, therefore, the
creation is nothing incomprehensible, i. e., unsatisfying ; at
least it is so only in moments of irreligiousness, of doubt, when
the mind turns away from God to actual things ; but it is
highly unsatisfactory to reflection, to theology, which looks
with one eye at heaven and with the other at earth. As the

L

218 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

cause, so is the effect. A flute sends forth the tones of a flute,
not those of a hassoon or a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones
of a bassoon, but hast never before seen or heard any wind-
instrument but the flute, it will certainly be inconceivable to
thee how such tones can come out of a flute. Thus it is here :
the comparison is only so far inappropriate as the flute itself is
a particular instrument. But imagine, if it be possible, an
absolutely universal instrument, which united in itself all
instruments, without being itself a particular one; thou wilt
then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a particular
tone which only belongs to a particular instrument, from an
instrument which thou hast divested precisely of that which is
characteristic in all particular instruments.

But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of incom
prehensibility the design of keeping the divine activity apart
from the human, of doing away with their similarity, or rather
their essential identity, so as to make the divine activity
essentially different from the human. This distinction between
the divine and human activity is " nothing." God makes,
he makes something external to himself, as man does. Making
is a genuine human idea. Nature gives birth to, brings forth ;
man makes. Making is an act which I can omit, a designed,
premeditated, external act ; an act in which my inmost being
is not immediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not
at the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse.
On the contrary, an activity which is identical with my being
is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as for example intellectual
production, which is an inward necessity to me; and for that
reason lays a deep hold on me, affects me pathologically.
Intellectual works are not made, making is only the external
activity applied to them ; they arise in us. To make is an
indifferent, therefore a free, i. e., optional activity. Thus far
then that He makes God is entirely at one with man,
not at all distinguished from him ; but an especial emphasis
is laid on this, that his making is free, arbitrary, at his
pleasure. " It has pleased God" to create a world. Thus man
here deifies satisfaction in self-pleasing, in caprice and ground
less arbitrariness. The fundamentally human character of the
divine activity is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded into a
human manifestation of a low kind; God, from a mirror of
human nature is converted into a mirror of human vanity and
self-complacency,

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 219

And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord ;
man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes divided: God
makes out of nothing; he creates, to make out of nothing- is
to create, this is the distinction. The positive condition
the act of making is a human one ; hut inasmuch as all that
is determinate in this conception is immediately denied, reflec
tion steps in and makes the divine activity not human. But
with this negation, comprehension, understanding comes to a
stand ; there remains only a negative, empty notion, because
conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the distinction between
the divine and human determination is in truth a nothing,
a nihil ncffc.tlrum of the understanding. The naive confes
sion of this is made in the supposition of "nothing" as an
object.

God is Love, but not human love ; Understanding, but not
human understanding, no ! an essentially different under
standing. But wherein consists this difference? I cannot
conceive an understanding which acts under other forms than
those of our own understanding ; I cannot halve or quarter
understanding so as to have several understandings ; I can
only conceive one and the same understanding. It is true that
I can and even must conceive understanding in itself, i.e., free
from the limits of my individuality; but in so doing I only
release it from limitations essentially foreign to it ; I do not
set aside its essential determinations or forms. Religious re
flection, on the contrary, denies precisely that determination
or quality which makes a thing what it is. Only that in which
the divine understanding is identical with the human, is
something, is understanding, is a real idea ; while that which
is supposed to make it another, yes, essentially another
than the human, is objectively nothing, subjectively a mere
chimera.

In all other definitions of the Divine Being the " nothing"
which constitutes the distinction is hidden ; in the creation, on
the contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing ; and
is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in dis
tinction from anthropology.

But the fundamental determination by which man makes his
own nature a foreign, incomprehensible nature, is the idea of
individuality or what is only a more abstract expression per
sonality. The idea of the existence of God first realizes
itself in the idea of revelation, and the idea of revelation first

L 2

220 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

realizes itself in the idea of personality. God is a personal
being : this is the spell, which charms the ideal into the real,
the subjective into the objective. All predicates, all attributes
of the divine being are fundamentally human; but as attributes
of a personal being, and therefore of a being distinct from man
and existing independently, they appear immediately to be
really other than human, yet so as that at the same time the
essential identity always remains at the foundation. Hence
reflection gives rise to the idea of so-called anthropomorphisms.
Anthropomorphisms are resemblances between God and man.
The attributes of the divine and of the human being are not
indeed the same, but they are analogous.

Thus personality is the antidote to Pantheism ; i. e., by the
idea of personality religious reflection expels from its thought
the identity of the divine and human nature. The rude but
characteristic expression of pantheism is : man is an effluence
or a portion of the divine being ; the religious expression is :
man is the image of God, or a being akin to God ; for accord
ing to religion man does not spring from Nature, but is of divine
race, of divine origin. But kinship is a vague, evasive expres
sion. There are degrees of kinship, near and distant. What
sort of kinship is intended ? For the relation of man to God,
there is but one form of kinship which is appropriate, the
nearest, profoundest, most sacred that can be conceived, the
relation of the child to the father. According to this God is
the Father of man, man the son, the child of God. Here is
posited at once the self-subsistence of God and the depen
dence of man, and posited as an immediate object of feeling ;
whereas in Pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as
the whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts.
Nevertheless this distinction is only an appearance. The father
is not a father without the child ; both together form a cor
related being. In love man renounces his independence, and
reduces himself to a part : a self-humiliation which is only
compensated by the fact that the one whom he loves at the
same time voluntarily becomes a part also ; that they both sub
mit to a higher power, the power of the spirit of family, the
power of love. Thus there is here the same relation between
God and man as in pantheism, save that in the one it is repre
sented as a personal, patriarchal relation, in the other as an im
personal, general one, save that pantheism expresses logically
and therefore definitely, directly, what religion invests with the

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 221

imagination. The correlation or rather the identity of God and
man is veiled in religion by representing both as persons or
individuals, and God as a self-subsistent, independent being
apart from his paternity : an independence which however is
only apparent, for he who, like the God of religion, is a father
from the depths of the heart, has his very life and being in his
child.

The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence between
God as father and man as child, cannot be shaken by the distinc
tion, that only Christ is the true, natural son of God, and that
men are but his adopted sons ; so that it is only to Christ as the
only-begotten Son, and by no means to men, that God stands
in an essential relation of dependence. For this distinction is
only a theological, i.e., an illusory one. God adopts only men,
not brutes. The ground of adoption lies in the human nature.
The man adopted by divine grace is only the man conscious of
his divine nature and dignity. Moreover, the only-begotten
Son himself is nothing else than the idea of humanity, than man
preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the
world in God, the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, tacit
man ; man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The Logos is
only the prelude of man. That which applies to the Logos
applies also to the nature of man.* But between God and the
only-begotten Son there is no real distinction, he who knows
the Son knows the Father also, and thus there is none between
God and man.

It is the same with the idea that man is the image of God.
The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a living being.
" Man is the image of God," means nothing more than that
man is a being who resembles God. Similarity between living
beings rests on natural relationship. The idea of man being
the image of God reduces itself therefore to kinship ; man is
like God, because he is the child of God. Resemblance is only
kinship presented to the senses ; from the former we infer the
latter.

But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an idea

* " The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it is

possible for me to win All that God gave to his only-begotten

Son, he has given to me as perfectly as to him." Predigten etzlicher Lehrer
vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. 14. " Between the only-
begotten Son and the Soul there is no distinction." Ib. p. 68.

222 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

as kinship. It is only the idea of personality which does away
with the identity of nature. Resemblance is identity which
will not admit itself to he identity, which hides itself behind a
dim medium, behind the vapour of the imagination. If I dis
perse this vapour, I come to naked identity. The more similar
beings are, the less are they to be distinguished ; if I know the
one, I know the other. It is true that resemblance has its de
grees. But also the resemblance between God and man has
its degrees. The good, pious man is more like God than the
man whose resemblance to Him is founded only on the nature
of man in general. And even with the pious man there is a
highest degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may
not be obtained here below, but only in the future life. But
that which man is to become, belongs already to him, at least
so far as possibility is concerned. The highest degree of re
semblance is that where there is no further distinction between
two individuals or beings than that they are two. The essen
tial qualities, those by which we distinguish things from each
other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot distinguish them
in thought, by the Reason, for this all data are wanting ; I
can only distinguish them by figuring them as visible in my
imagination or by actually seeing them. If my eyes do not
say there are really two separately existent beings, my reason
will take both for one and the same being. Nay, even my eyes
may confound the one with the other. Things are capable
of being confounded with each other which are distinguishable
by the sense and not by the reason, or rather which are differ
ent only as to existence, not as to essence. Persons altogether
alike have an extraordinary attraction not only for each other,
but for the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all
kinds of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an
illusion ; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an
independent existence is always allied to the idea of a determi
nate difference.

Religion is the mind's light, the rays of which are broken by
the medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to make
the same being appear a double one. Resemblance is to
the Reason identity, which in the realm of reality is divided
or broken up by immediate sensational impressions, in the
sphere of religion by the illusions of the imagination; in short,
that which is identical to the reason is made separate by the idea
of individuality or personality. I can discover no distinction

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 223

between father and child, archetype and image, God and man,
if I do not introduce the idea of personality. Eesenihlance is
here the external guise of identity ; the identity which reason,
the sense of truth, affirms, hut which the imagination denies ;
the identity which allows an appearance of distinction to re
main, a m ere phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor
directly no.

224 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTEE XXIII.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE

OF GOD.

THE personality of God is thus the means by which man con
verts the qualities of his own nature into the qualities of
another being, of a being external to himself. The person
ality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of
man.

On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the
Hegelian speculative doctrine, according to which man's con
sciousness of God is the seZ/-consciousness of God. God is
thought, cognized by us. According to speculation, God, in
being thought by us, thinks himself or is conscious of himself ;
speculation identifies the two sides which religion separates.
In this it is far deeper than religion, for the fact of God being
thought is not like the fact of an external object being thought.
God is an inward, spiritual being; thinking, consciousness,
is an inward, spiritual act; to think God is therefore to affirm
what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That
God is thought, cognized, is essential ; that this tree is thought,
is to the tree accidental, unessential. God is an indispensable
thought, a necessity of thought. But how is it possible that
this necessity should simply express the subjective, and not
the objective also? how is it possible that God if he
is to exist for us, to be an object to us must necessarily
be thought, if he is in himself like a block, indifferent
whether he be thought, cognized or not? No! it is not
possible. We are necessitated to regard the fact of God being
thought by us, as his thinking himself, or his self-conscious
ness.

Religious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which
God is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us, on
the other, he is thought by himself. God thinks himself, inde
pendently of his being thought by us : he has a self-conscious
ness distinct from, independent of, our consciousness. This is

SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 225

certainly consistent when once God is conceived as a real
personality; for the real human person thinks himself, and is
thought by another ; my thinking of him is to him an in
different, external fact. This is the last degree of anthropo-
pathism. In order to make God free and independent of all
that is human, he is regarded as a formal, real person, his
thinking is confined within himself, and the fact of his being
thought is excluded from him, and is represented as occurring
in another being. This indifference or independence with
respect to us, to our thought, is the attestation of a self- sub -
sistent, i.e., external, personal existence. It is true that re
ligion also makes the fact of God being thought into the self-
thinking of God ; but because this process goes forward behind
its consciousness, since God is immediately presupposed as a
self-existent personal being, the religious consciousness only
embraces the indifference of the two facts.

Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference
of the two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself:
creation is the revelation of God. But for stones, plants, and
animals there is no God, but only for man; so that Nature
exists for the sake of man, and man purely for the sake of
God. God glorifies himself in man : man is the pride of God.
God indeed knows himself even without man ; but so long as
there is no other me, so long is he only a possible, conceptional
person. First when a difference from God, a non -divine is
posited, is God conscious of himself; first when he knows
what is not God, does he know what it is to be God, does he
know the bliss of his Godhead. First in the positing of what
is other than himself, of the world, does God posit himself as
God. Is God almighty without creation? No ! Omnipotence
first realizes, proves itself in creation. What is a power, a
property, which does not exhibit, attest itself? What is a
force which effects nothing? a light that does not illuminate?
a wisdom which knows nothing, i.e., nothing real ? And what
is omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man does
not exist? Man is nothing without God; but also, God is
nothing without man ;* for only in man is God an object as

* " God can as little do without us as we without him," Predigten
etzlicher Lehrer, &c. p. 16. See also on this subject Strauss, Christl.
Glaubensl. B. i. 47, and the author's work entitled, P. Bayle, pp. 104, 107.

L 3

226 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

God ; only in man is lie God. The various qualities of man
first give difference, which is the ground of reality in God.
The physical qualities of man make God a physical being
God the Father, who is the creator of Nature, i. e., the per
sonified, anthropomorphized essence of Nature;* the intel
lectual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the
moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine
compassion ; sorrow for sin is the delight of the divine holiness.
Life, fire, emotion comes into God only through man. With
the stubborn sinner God is angry; over the repentant sinner
he rejoices. Man is the revealed God : in man the divine
essence first realizes and unfolds itself. In the creation of
Nature God goes out of himself, he has relation to what is
other than himself, but in man he returns into himself: man
knows God, because in him God finds and knows himself, feels
himself as God. Where there is no pressure, no want, there is
no feeling ; and feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can
know compassion without having felt the want of it? justice
without the experience of injustice? happiness without the
experience of distress? Thou must feel what a thing is;
otherwise thou wilt never learn to know it. It is in man that
the divine properties first become feelings, i.e., man is the self-
feeling of God; and the feeling of God is the real God; for the
qualities of God are indeed only real qualities, realities, as felt
by man, as feelings. If the experience of human misery
were outside of God, in a being personally separate from him,
compassion also would not be in God, and we should hence
have again the Being destitute of qualities, or more correctly
the nothing, which God was before man or without man. For
example: Whether I be a good or sympathetic being for
that alone is good which gives, imparts itself, bonum est com-
municativum sui, is unknown to me before the opportunity
presents itself of showing goodness to another being. Only
in the act of imparting do I experience the happiness of bene
ficence, the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy
apart from the joy of the recipient? No; I rejoice because

* " This temporal, transitory life in this world (i. e. natural life) we have
through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But the
eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion and Resurrection of

our Lord Jesus Christ Jesus Christ a Lord over that life."

Luther (Th. xvi, s. 459).

SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 227

he rejoices. I feel the wretchedness of another, I suffer with
him ; in alleviating his wretchedness I alleviate my own ;
sympathy with suffering is itself suffering. The joyful feeling
of the giver is only the reflex, the self-consciousness of the joy
in the receiver. Their joy is a common feeling, which accord
ingly makes itself visible in the union of hands, of lips. So it
is here. Just as the feeling of human misery is human, so
the feeling of divine compassion is human. It is only a sense
of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense of the hliss of
infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other is not. The
two are inseparable, inseparable the feeling of God as God,
and the feeling of man as man, inseparable the knowledge of
man and the self-knowledge of God. God is a Self only in
the human self, only in the human power of discrimination,
in the principle of difference that lies in the human being.
Thus compassion is only felt as a me, a self, a force, i. e., as
something special, through its opposite. The opposite of God
gives qualities to God, realizes him, makes him a Self. God
is God, only through that which is not God. Herein we have
also the mystery of Jacob Bonnie's doctrine. It must only be
borne in mind that Jacob Bohme, as a mystic and theologian,
places outside of man the feelings in which the divine being
first realizes himself, passes from nothing to something, to a
qualitative being apart from the feelings of man (at least
in imagination), and that he makes them objective in the
form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these
qualities still only represent the impressions made on his
feelings. It will then be obvious that what the empirical
religious consciousness first posits with the real creation
of Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness places
before the creation in the premuridane God, in doing which,
however, it does away with the reality of the creation. For
if God has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no
need first to create what is not-God in order to be God. The
creation of the world is here a pure superfluity, or rather an
impossibility ; this God for very reality does not come to
reality ; he is already in himself the full and restless world.
This is especially true of Schelling's doctrine of God, who
though made up of innumerable " potences" is yet thoroughly
impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical
religious consciousness, which makes God reveal, i. e., realize
himself in real man, real nature, and according to which man

228 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is created purely for the praise and glory of God. That is to
say, man is the mouth of God, which articulates and accentuates
the divine qualities as human feelings. God wills that he be
honoured, praised. Why? because the passion of man for
God is the self-consciousness of God. Nevertheless, the re
ligious consciousness separates these two properly inseparable
sides, since by means of the idea of personality it makes God
and man independent existences. Now the Hegelian specula
tion identifies the two sides, but so as to leave the old contra
diction still at the foundation ; it is therefore only the con
sistent carrying out, the completion of a religious truth. The
learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel as not
to perceive that his doctrine, at least in this relation, does not
in fact contradict religion ; that it contradicts it only in the
same way as, in general, a developed, consequent process of
thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent, but never
theless radically identical conception.

But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the divine
" nothing" becomes something, obtains qualities, then the being
of man is alone the real being of God, man is the real God.
And if in the consciousness which man has of God first arises
the self-consciousness of God, then the human consciousness is,
per se y the divine consciousness. Why then dost thou alienate
man's consciousness from him, and make it the self- conscious
ness of a being distinct from man, of that which is an object
to him ? Why dost thou vindicate existence to God, to man
only the consciousness of that existence ? God has his con
sciousness in man, and man his being in God ? Man's
knowledge of God is God's knowledge of himself? What a
divorcing and contradiction ! The true statement is this : man's
knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own
nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth.
Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God,
in man, therefore ; in the being of God it is only thy own
being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself
before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind it.
If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are
divine.

Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion, or a theology,
which is distinct from psychology and anthropology, and reco
gnise anthropology as itself theology, do we attain to a true,
self- satisfy ing identity of the divine and human being, the

SPECULATIVE DOCTKINE OF GOD. 229

identity of the human being with itself. In every theory of the
identity of the divine and human which is not true identity,
unity of the human nature with itself, there still lies at the
foundation a division, a separation into two, since the identity
is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed to be abolished.
Every theory of this kind is in contradiction with itself and
with the understanding, is a half measure a thing of the
imagination a perversion, a distortion ; w r hich, however, the
more perverted and false it is, all the more appears to be pro
found.

230 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TEINITY.

RELIGION gives reality or objectivity not only to the human or
divine nature in general as a personal being ; it further gives
reality to the fundamental determinations or fundamental dis
tinctions of that nature as persons. The Trinity is therefore
originally nothing else than the sum of the essential funda
mental distinctions which man perceives in the human nature.
According as the mode of conceiving this nature varies, so
also the fundamental determinations on which the Trinity is
founded vary. But these distinctions, perceived in one and the
same human nature, are hypostasized as substances, as divine
persons. And herein, namely, that these different determina
tions are in God hypostases, subjects, is supposed to lie the
distinction between these determinations as they are in God,
and as they exist in man, in accordance with the law already
enunciated, that only in the idea of personality does the human
personality transfer and make objective its own qualities. But
the personality exists only in the imagination; the funda
mental determinations are therefore only for the imagination
hypostases, persons ; for reason, for thought, they are mere
relations or determinations. The idea of the Trinity contains
in itself the contradiction of polytheism and monotheism, of
imagination and reason, of fiction and reality. Imagina
tion gives the Trinity, reason the Unity of the persons. Ac
cording to reason, the things distinguished are only distinc
tions ; according to imagination, the distinctions are things
distinguished, which therefore do away with the unity of the
divine being. To the reason, the divine persons are phantoms,
to the imagination realities. The idea of the Trinity demands
that man should think the opposite of what he imagines, and
imagine the opposite of what he thinks, that he should think
phantoms realities.*

* It is curious to observe how the speculative religious philosophy
undertakes the defence of the Trinity against the godless understanding,

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 231

There are three Persons, but they are not essentially distin
guished. Tres personce, hut una essentia. So far the concep
tion is a natural one. We can conceive three and even more
persons, identical in essence. Thus we men are distinguished
from one another by personal differences, but in the main, in
essence, in humanity, we are one. And this identification is
made not only by the speculative understanding, but even by
feeling. A given individual is a man as we are ; punctuin
satis ; in this feeling all distinctions vanish, whether he be
rich or poor, clever or stupid, culpable or innocent. The feel
ing of compassion, sympathy, is therefore a substantial, essen
tial, speculative feeling. But the three or more human persons
exist apart from each other, have a separate existence, even
when they verify and confirm the unity of their nature
by fervent love. They together constitute, through love, a
single moral personality, but each has a physical existence for
himself. Though they may be reciprocally absorbed in each
other, may be unable to dispense with each other, they have yet
always a formally independent existence. Independent exist
ence, existence apart from others, is the essential character
istic of a person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God,
and necessarily so ; for while his personality is the same
as that of man, it is held to be the same with a difference, on
the ground simply of this postulate : there mmt be a difference.
The three Persons in God have no existence out of each other ;
else there would meet us in the heaven of Christian dogmatics,
not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at least three divine
Persons in an individual form, three Gods. The gods of Olym
pus were real persons, for they existed apart from each other,
they had the criterion of real personality in their individuality,
though they were one in essence, in divinity ; they had different
personal attributes, but were each singly a god, alike in divinity,
different as existing subjects or persons; they were genuine

and yet, by doing away with the personal substances, and explaining the
relation of Father and Son as merely an inadequate image borrowed from
organic life, robs the Trinity of its very heart and soul. Truly, if the cab
balistic artifices which the speculative religious philosophy applies in the
service of the absolute religion were admissible in favour of finite religions,
it would not be difficult to squeeze the Pandora's box of Christian dogmatics
out of the horns of the Egyptian Apis. Nothing further would be needed
for this purpose than the ominous distinction of the understanding from the
speculative reason, a distinction which is adapted to the justification of
every absurdity.

232 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

divine personalities. The three Persons of the Christian God
head, on the contrary, are only imaginary, pretended persons,
assuredly different from real persons, just because they are only
phantasms, shadows of personalities, while, notwithstanding,
they are assumed to be real persons. The essential character
istic of personal reality, the polytheistic element, is excluded,
denied as non-divine. But by this negation their personality
becomes a mere phantasm. Only in the truth of the plural lies
the truth of the Persons. The three persons of the Christian
Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods ; at least they are not
meant to be such ; but unus Deus, one God. The three Per
sons end, not, as might have been expected, in a plural, but in
a singular ; they are not only Unum the gods of Olympus are
that but Unus. Unity has here the significance not of essence
only, but also of existence ; unity is the existential form of
God. Three are one : the plural is a singular. God is a per
sonal being consisting of three persons.*

The three persons are thus only phantoms in the eyes of
reason, for the conditions or modes under which alone their
personality could be realized, are done away with by the com
mand of monotheism. The unity gives the lie to the person
ality ; the self-subsistence of the persons is annihilated in the
self-subsistence of the unity, they are mere relations. The
Son is not without the Father, the Father not without the Son;
the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the symmetry, expresses
nothing but the relation of the two to each other. But the
divine persons are distinguished from each other only by that
which constitutes their relation to each other. The essential
in the Father as a person is that he is a Father, of the Son that
he is a Son. What the Father is over and above his father
hood, does not belong to his personality ; therein he is God,
and as God identical with the Son as God. Therefore it is
said : God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost :
God is in all three alike. " There is one person of the
Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But

* The unity has not the significance of genus, not of unum but of unus.
(See Augustine and Petrus Lomb. 1. i. dist. 19, c. 7, 8, 9.) " Hi ergo tres,
qui unum sunt propter iiieffabilem conjunctionem deitatis qua ineftabiliter
copulantur, unus Deus est." (Petrus L. 1. c. c. 6.) " How can reason
bring itself into accord with this, or believe, that three is one and one is
three?" Luther (T. x. iv. p. 13).

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 233

the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
is all one ;" i. e., they are distinct persons, but without distinc
tion of substance. The personality, therefore, arises purely
in the relation of the Fatherhood ; i. e., the idea of the person
is here only a relative idea, the idea of a relation. Man as a
father is dependent, he is essentially the correlative of the son ;
he is not a father without the son ; by fatherhood man reduces
himself to a relative, dependent, impersonal being. It is
before all things necessary not to allow oneself to be deceived
by these relations as they exist in reality, in men. The human
father is, over and above his paternity, an independent per
sonal being ; he has at least a formal existence for himself, an
existence apart from his son ; he is not merely a father, with
the exclusion of all the other predicates of a real personal
being. Fatherhood is a relation which the bad man can make
quite an external one, not touching his personal being. But
in God the Father, there is no distinction between God the
Father and God the Son as God; the abstract fatherhood alone
constitutes his personality, his distinction from the Son, whose
personality likewise is founded only on the abstract sonship.

But at the same time these relations, as has been said, are
maintained to be not mere relations, but real persons, beings,
substances. Thus the truth of the plural, the truth of poly
theism is again affirmed,* and the truth of monotheism is denied.
To require the reality of the persons is to require the unreality
of the unity, and conversely, to require the reality of the unity
is to require the unreality of the persons. Thus in the holy
mystery of the Trinity, that is to say, so far as it is supposed
to represent a truth distinct from human nature, all resolves
itself into delusions, phantasms, contradictions, and sophisms. f

* " Quia ergo pater Deus et films Deus et spiritus s. Dens cur non dicuntur
tres Dii? Ecce proposuit hanc propositionem (Augustinus) attende quid

respondeat Si autem dicerem : tres Deos, contradiceret scriptura

dicens : Audi Israel : Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio quaestionis : quare
potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia scil. illud non contradicit
scriptura." Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 23, c. 3). How much did even Catholicism
repose upon Holy Writ !

f A truly masterly presentation of the overwhelming contradictions in
which the mystery of the Trinity involves the genuine religious sentiment,
is to be found in the work already cited Theanthropos. Eine Reihe von
Aphorismen which expresses in the form of the religious sentiment what
in the present work is expressed in the form of the reason ; and which is
therefore especially to be recommended to women.

234 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.

As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, resolves
itself into mere contradictions, so also, on grounds easily un
derstood, does its subjective essence.

The subjective elements of religion are on the one hand
Faith and Love; on the other hand, so far as it presents itself
externally in a cultus, the sacraments of Baptism and the
Lord's Supper. The sacrament of Faith is Baptism, the
sacrament of Love is the Lord's Supper. In strictness there
are only two sacraments, as there are two subjective elements
in religion, Faith and Love : for Hope is only faith in relation
to the future ; so that there is the same logical impropriety
in making it a distinct mental act as in making the Holy
Ghost a distinct being.

The identity of the sacraments with the specific essence of
religion as hitherto developed is at once made evident, apart
from other relations, by the fact that they have for their basis
natural materials or things, to which, however, is attributed a
significance and effect in contradiction with their nature.
Thus the material of baptism is water, common, natural
water, just as the material of religion in general is common,
natural humanity. But as religion alienates our own nature
from us, and represents it as not ours, so the water of baptism
is regarded as quite other than common water; for it has not
a physical but a hyperphysical power and significance ; it is
the Lavacrum regenerations, it purifies man from the stains of
original sin, expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God.
Thus it is natural water only in appearance ; in truth it is
supernatural. In other words : the baptismal water has super
natural effects (and that which operates supernaturally is
itself supernatural) only in idea, only in the imagination.

And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural water.
Baptism has no validity and efficacy if it is not performed

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 235

with water. Thus the natural quality of water has in itself
value and significance, since the supernatural effect of baptism
is associated in a supernatural manner with water only, and
not with any other material. God, by means of his omnipo
tence, could have united the same effect to anything whatever.
But he does not; he accommodates himself to natural quali
ties ; he chooses an element corresponding, analogous to his
operation. Thus the natural is not altogether set aside ; on
the contrary, there always remains a certain analogy with the
natural, an appearance of naturalness. In like manner wine
represents blood; bread, flesh.* Even miracle is guided by
analogies; water is changed into wine or blood, one species
into another, with the retention of the indeterminate generic
idea of liquidity. So it is here. Water is the purest, clearest
of liquids ; in virtue of this its natural character it is the image
of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short, water has
a significance in itself, as water ; it is on account of its natural
quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the
Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a
beautiful, profound natural significance. But, at the very same
time, this beautiful meaning is lost again because water has a
transcendental effect, an effect which it has only through the
supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, and not through itself.
The natural quality becomes indifferent : he who makes wine
out of water, can at will unite the effects of baptismal water
with any material whatsoever.

Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of miracle.
Baptism is itself a miracle. The same power which works
miracles, and by means of them, as a proof of the divinity of
Christ, turns Jews and Pagans into Christians, this same
power has instituted baptism and operates in it. Christianity
began with miracles, and it carries itself forward with miracles.
If the miraculous power of baptism is denied, miracles in ge
neral must be denied. The miracle-working water of baptism
springs from the same source as the water which at the wed
ding at Cana in Galilee was turned into wine.

The faith which is produced by miracle is not dependent on
me, on my spontaneity, on freedom of judgment and convic-

* " Sacramentum ejus rei similitudinem gerit, cujus signum est." Petrus
Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 1, c. 1).

236 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

tion. A miracle which happens hefore my eyes I must believe,
if I am not utterly obdurate. Miracle compels me to believe
in the divinity of the miracle-worker.* It is true that in some
cases it presupposes faith, namely, where it appears in the
light of a reward ; but with that exception it presupposes not
so much actual faith as a believing disposition, willingness,
submission, in opposition to an unbelieving, obdurate, and
malignant disposition, like that of the Pharisees. The end of
miracle is to prove that the miracle-worker is really that which
he assumes to be. Faith based on miracle is the only
thoroughly warranted, well-grounded, objective faith. The
faith which is presupposed by miracle is only faith in a
Messiah, a Christ in general; but the faith that this very man
is Christ and this is the main point is first wrought by
miracle as its consequence. This presupposition even of an
indeterminate faith is, however, by no means necessary. Mul
titudes first became believers through miracles; thus miracle
was the cause of their faith. If then miracles do not contra
dict Christianity, and how should they contradict it ? neither
does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contradict it. On the
contrary, if baptism is to have a Christian significance it must
of necessity have a supernaturalistic one. Paul was converted
by a sudden miraculous appearance, when he was still full of
hatred to the Christians. Christianity took him by violence.
It is in vain to allege that with another than Paul this appear
ance would not have had the same consequences, and that
therefore the effect of it must still be attributed to Paul. For
if the same appearance had been vouchsafed to others, they
would assuredly have become as thoroughly Christian as Paul.
Is not divine grace omnipotent ? The unbelief and non-con
vertibility of the Pharisees is no counter-argument ; for from
them grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must
necessarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, mal
treated and crucified. For this purpose there must be indivi
duals who should maltreat and crucify him : and hence it was
a prior necessity that the divine grace should be withdrawn
from those individuals. It was not indeed totally withdrawn

* In relation to the miracle-worker faith (confidence in God's aid) is
certainly the causa efficiens of the miracle. (See Matt. xvii. 20 ; Acts, vi. 8.)
But in relation to the spectators of the miracle and it is they who are in
question here miracle is the causa efficiens of faith.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 237

from them, but this was only in order to aggravate their guilt,
and by no means with the earnest will to convert them. How
would it be possible to resist the will of God, supposing of
course that it was his real will, not a mere velleity ? Paul
himself represents his conversion as a work of divine grace
thoroughly unmerited on his part ;* and quite correctly. Not
to resist divine grace, i. e., to accept divine grace, to allow it to
work upon one, is already something good, and consequently is
an effect of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the
attempt to reconcile miracle with freedom of inquiry and
thought, or grace with freedom of will. In religion the nature
of man is regarded as separate from man. The activity, the
grace of God is the projected spontaneity of man, Free Will
made objective.!

It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the expe
rience that men are not sanctified, not converted by baptism,
as an argument against its miraculous efficacy, as is done by
rationalistic orthodox theologians ;J for all kinds of miracles,
the objective power of prayer, and in general all the superna
tural truths of religion, also contradict experience. He who
appeals to experience renounces faith. Where experience is a
datum, there religious faith and feeling have already vanished.
The unbeliever denies the objective efficacy of prayer only
because it contradicts experience ; the atheist goes yet farther,
he denies even the existence of God, because he does not find
it in experience. Inward experience creates no difficulty to
him ; for what thou experiences! in thyself of another existence,
proves only that there is something in thee which thou thyself
art not, which works upon thee independently of thy personal

* " Here we see a miracle surpassing all miracles, that Christ should
have so mercifully converted his greatest enemy." Luther (T. xvi. p. 560).

f Hence it is greatly to the honour of Luther's understanding and sense
of truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus, he unconditionally
denied the free will of man as opposed to divine grace. " The name Free
Will," says Luther, quite correctly from the stand-point of religion, " is a
divine title and name, which none ought to bear but the Divine Majesty
alone." (T. xix. p. 28.)

J Experience indeed extorted even from the old theologians, whose faith
was an uncompromising one, the admission that the effects of baptism are, at
least in this life, very limited. " Baptismus non aufert omnes pcenalitates
hujus vitse." Mezger. Theol. Schol. T. iv. p. 251. See also Petrus L. 1. iv.
dist. 4, c. 4 ; 1. ii. dist, 32, c. 1.

238 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

will and consciousness, without thy knowing what this myste
rious something is. But faith is stronger than experience.
The facts which contradict faith do not disturb it ; it is happy
in itself ; it has eyes only for itself, to all else it is blind.

It is true that religion, even on the stand-point of its mystical
materialism, always requires the co-operation of subjectivity,
and therefore requires it in the sacraments ; but herein is exhi
bited its contradiction with itself. And this contradiction is
particularly glaring in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; for
baptism is given to infants, though even in them, as a condi
tion of its efficacy, the co-operation of subjectivity is insisted
on, but, singularly enough, is supplied in the faith of others,
in the faith of the parents, or of their representatives, or of
the church in general.*

The object in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the
body of Christ, a real body ; but the necessary predicates of
reality are wanting to it. Here we have again, in an example
presented to the senses, what we have found in the nature of
religion in general. The object or subject in the religious
syntax is always a real human or natural subject or predicate;
but the closer definition, the essential predicate of this predicate
is denied. The subject is sensuous, but the predicate is not
sensuous, i.e., is contradictory to the subject. I distinguish a
real body from an imaginary one only by this, that the former
produces corporeal effects, involuntary effects, upon me. If
therefore the bread be the real body of God, the partaking
of it must produce in me immediate, involuntarily sanctifying
effects; I need to make no special preparation, to bring with me
no holy disposition. If I eat an apple, the apple of itself gives
rise to the taste of apple. At the utmost I need nothing more
than a healthy stomach to perceive that the apple is an apple.
The Catholics require a state of fasting as a condition of par
taking the Lord's Supper. This is enough. I take hold of the
body with my lips, I crush it with my teeth, by my oesophagus
it is carried into my stomach; I assimilate it corporeally, not

* Even in the absurd fiction of the Lutherans, that " infants believe in
baptism," the action of subjectivity reduces itself to the faith of others, since
the faith of infants is " wrought by God through the intercession of the
god-parents and their bringing up of the children in the faith of the
Christian Church." Luther (T. xiii. pp. 360, 361). " Thus the faith of
another helps nie to obtain a faith of my own." Ib. (T. xiv. p. 347a).

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 239

spiritually.* Why are its effects not held to be corporeal ? Why
should not this hody, which is a corporeal, hut at the same
time heavenly, supernatural substance, also bring forth in me
corporeal and yet at the same time holy, supernatural effects?
If it is my disposition, my faith, which alone makes the divine
body a means of sanctification to me, which transubstantiates
the dry bread into pneumatic animal substance, why do I still
need an external object? It is I myself who give rise to the
effect of the body on me, and therefore to the reality of the body;
I am acted on by myself. Where is the objective truth and
power ? He who partakes the Lord's Supper unworthily has
nothing further than the physical enjoyment of bread and wine.
He who brings nothing, takes nothing away. The specific
difference of this bread from common natural bread rests there
fore only on the difference between the state of mind at the
table of the Lord, and the state of mind at any other table.
" He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."t But
this mental state itself is dependent only on the significance
which I give to this bread. If it has for me the significance not
of bread, but of the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of
common bread. In the significance attached to it lies its effect.
I do not eat to satisfy hunger; hence I consume only a small
quantity. Thus to go no further than the quantity taken,
which in every other act of taking food plays an essential part,
the significance of common bread is externally set aside.

But this supernatural significance exists only in the imagina
tion; to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread, bread.
The Schoolmen therefore had recourse to the precious distinc
tion of substance and accidents. All the accidents which con-

* " This," says Luther, " is in summa our opinion, that in and with the
bread, the body of Christ is truly eaten; thus, that all which the bread
undergoes and effects, the body of Christ undergoes and effects ; that it is
divided, eaten and chewed with the teeth propter unionem sacramentalem"
(Plank's Gesch. der Entst. des protest. Lehrbeg. B. viii. s. 369.) Elsewhere,
it is true, Luther denies that the body of Christ, although it is partaken of
corporeally, " is chewed and digested like a piece of beef." (T. xix. p. 429.)
No wonder; for that which is partaken of, is an object without objectivity, a
body without corporeality, flesh without the qualities of flesh ; " spiritual
flesh," as Luther says, i.e., imaginary flesh. Be it observed further, that the
Protestants also take the Lord's Supper fasting, but this is merely a custom
with them, not a law. (See Luther, T. xviii. p. 200, 201.)
. f 1 Cor. xi. 29.

24<0 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

stitute tlie nature of wine and bread are still there; only that
which is made up by these accidents, the subject, the substance,
is wanting, is changed into flesh and blood. But all the pro
perties together, whose combination forms this unity, are the
substance itself. What are wine and bread if I take from them
the properties which make them what they are ? Nothing.
Flesh and blood have therefore no objective existence; other
wise they must be an object to the unbelieving senses. On
the contrary: the only valid witnesses of an objective existence
taste, smell, touch, sight testify unanimously to the reality
of the wine and bread, and nothing else. The wine and bread
are in reality natural, but in imagination divine substances.

Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the real
unreal, and the unreal real: in direct contradiction with the
truth of the senses, with the truth of reason. Faith denies
what objective reason affirms, and affirms what it denies.* The
mystery of the Lord's Supper is the mystery of faith :f hence
the partaking of it is the highest, the most rapturous, blissful
act of the believing soul. The negation of objective truth
which is not gratifying to feeling, the truth of reality, of the
objective world and reason, a negation which constitutes the
essence of faith, reaches its highest point in the Lord's Supper;
for faith here denies an immediately present, evident, indubitable
object, maintaining that it is not what the reason and senses
declare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread, but in
reality flesh. The position of the Schoolmen, that according
to the accidents it is bread, and according to the substance

* " Videtur enim species vini et panis, et substantia panis et vini non
creditor. Creditor aotern snbstantia corporis et sangninis Christi et tarnen
species non cernitor." Bernardos (ed. Bas. 1552, pp. 189 191).

f It is so iii another relation not developed here, hot which may be men
tioned in a note: namely, the following. In religion, in faith, man is an
object to himself as the object, i.e., the end or determining motive, of God.
Man is occopied with himself in and throogh God. God is the means of
homan existence and happiness. This religioos troth, embodied in a coltos,
in a sensooos form, is the Lord's Sopper. In this sacrament man feeds opon
God the Creator of heaven and earth as on material food; by the act
of eating and drinking he declares God to be a mere means of life to man.
Here man is virtoally sopposed to be the God of God: hence the Lord's
Sopper is the highest self-enjoyment of homan sobjectivity. Even the
Protestant not indeed in words, bot in troth transforms God into an ex
ternal thing, since he subjects Him to himself as an object of sensational
enjoyment.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 241

flesh, is merely the abstract, explanatory, intellectual expression
of what faith accepts and declares, and has therefore no other
meaning than this : to the senses or to common perception it is
bread, but in truth, flesh. Where therefore the imaginative
tendency of faith has assumed such power over the senses and
reason as to deny the most evident sensible truths, it is no
wonder if believers can raise themselves to such a degree of
exaltation as actually to see blood instead of wine. Such ex
amples Catholicism has to show. Little is wanting in order to
perceive externally what faith and imagination hold to be real.

So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord's Supper as
a holy, nay the holiest, highest truth, governed man, so long
was his governing principle the imagination. All criteria of
reality and unreality, of unreason and reason, had disappeared :
anything whatever that could be imagined passed for real pos
sibility. Religion hallowed every contradiction of reason, of
the nature of things. Do not ridicule the absurd questions of
the Schoolmen ! They were necessary consequences of faith.
That which is only a matter of feeling had to be made a matter
of reason, that which contradicts the understanding had to be
made not to contradict it. This was the fundamental contra
diction of scholasticism, whence all other contradictions followed
of course.

And it is of no particular importance whether I believe the
Protestant or the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The
sole distinction is, that in Protestantism it is only on the
tongue, in the act of partaking, that flesh and blood are united
in a thoroughly miraculous manner with bread and wine ;*
while in Catholicism, it is before the act of partaking, by the
power of the priest, who however here acts only in the name
of the Almighty, that bread and wine are really transmuted
into flesh and blood. The Protestant prudently avoids a
definite explanation ; he does not lay himself open like the
pious, uncritical simplicity of Catholicism, whose God, as an
external object, can be devoured by a mouse; he shuts up his

* "Nostrates, prsesentiam realem consecrationis effectum esse, adfirmant;
idque ita, ut turn se exserat, cum usus legitiraus accedit. Nee est quod
regeras, Christum hsec verba: hoc est corpus meum, protulisse, antequam
discipuli ejus comederent, adeoque panem jam ante usum corpus Christ!
fuisse." Buddeus (1. c. 1. v. c. 1, 13, 17). See, on the other hand,
Concil. Trident. Sessio 13, cc. 3, 8, Can. 4.

M

242 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

God within himself, where he can no more be torn from him,
and thus secures him as well from the power of accident as
from that of ridicule ; yet, notwithstanding this, he just as
much as the Catholic consumes real flesh and hlood in the
hread and wine. Slight indeed was the difference at first
between Protestants and Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's
Supper ! Thus at Anspach there arose a controversy on the
question " whether the body of Christ enters the stomach,
and is digested like other food ?"*

But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the
objective existence the mere appearance, and the emotional,
imaginary existence the truth and reality ; still, in itself or in
truth, that which is really objective is only the natural ele
ments. Even the Host in the pyx of the Catholic priest is in
itself only to faith a divine body, this external thing, into
which he transubstantiates the divine being is only a thing of
faith; for even here the body is not visible, tangible, tasteable
as a body. That is : the bread is only in its significance
flesh. It is true that to faith this significance has the sense
of actual existence ; as, in general, in the ecstasy of fervid
feeling that which signifies becomes the thing signified; it is
held not to signify, but to be flesh. But this state of being
flesh is not that of real flesh; it is a state of being which is
only believed in, imagined, i. e., it has only the value, the
quality, of a significance, a truth conveyed in a symbol. f A
thing which has a special significance for me, is another thing
in my imagination than in reality. The thing signifying is
not itself that which is signified. What it is, is evident to the
senses ; what it signifies, is only in my feelings, conception,
imagination, is only for me, not for others, is not objectively
present. So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that the
Lord's Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the same
thing as his opponents ; only he disturbed the illusion of the
religious imagination; for that w T hich "is" in the Lord's

* Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Numb. 1783, p. 127.

f " The fanatics however believe that it is mere bread and wine, and it is
assuredly so as they believe ; they have it so, and eat mere bread and wine."
Luther (T. xix. p. 432). That is to say, if thou believest, representest to
thyself, conceivest, that the bread is not bread, but the body of Christ, it is
not bread; but if thou dost not believe so, it is not so. What it is in thy
belief that it actually is.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 243

Supper, is only an illusion of the imagination, but with the
further illusion that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only ex
pressed simply, nakedly, prosaically, rationalistically, and there
fore offensively, what the others declared mystically, indirectly,
inasmuch as they confessed* that the effect of the Lord's Supper
depends only on a worthy disposition or on faith ; i. e., that the
bread and wine are the flesh and blood of the Lord, are the
Lord himself, only for him for whom they have the super
natural significance of the divine body, for on this alone depends
the worthy disposition, the religious emotion. f

But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently is
nothing, for only that which produces effects, is, without a
certain state of mind, without faith, then in faith alone lies its
reality; the entire event goes forward in the feelings alone.
If the idea that I here receive the real body of the Saviour acts
on the religious feelings, this idea itself arises from the
feelings ; it produces devout sentiments, because it is itself a
devout idea. Thus here also the religious subject is acted on
by himself as if by another being, through the conception of
an imaginary object. Therefore the process of the Lord's
Supper can quite well, even without the intermediation of bread
and wine, without any church ceremony, be accomplished in
the imagination. There are innumerable devout poems, the
sole theme of which is the blood of Christ. In these we have
a genuinely poetical celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the
lively representation of the suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul
identifies itself with him ; here the saint in poetic exaltation
drinks the pure blood, unmixed with any contradictory, material
elements; here there is no disturbing object between the idea
of the blood and the blood itself.

But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in general, is
nothing without a certain state of mind, without faith, never
theless religion presents the sacrament at the same time as
something in itself real, external, distinct from the human

* Even the Catholics also. " Hujus sacramenti effectus, quern in anima
operatiir digne sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad Christum." Concil.
Florent. de S. Euchar.

f " If the body of Christ is in the bread and is eaten with faith, it
strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the body of Christ
which the mouth eats." Luther (T. xix. p. 433; see also p. 205). " For
what we believe that we receive, that we receive in truth." Ib. (T. xvii.
p. 557).

M 2

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

being, so that in the religious consciousness the true thing,
which is faith, is made only a collateral thing, a condition, and
the imaginary thing becomes the principal thing. And the
necessary, immanent consequences and effects of this religious
materialism, of this subordination of the human to the supposed
divine, of the subjective to the supposed objective, of truth to
imagination, of morality to religion, the necessary conse
quences are superstition and immorality : superstition, because
a thing has attributed to it an effect which does not lie in its
nature, because a thing is held up as not being what it in truth
is, because a mere conception passes for objective reality; im
morality, because necessarily, in feeling, the holiness of the
action as such is separated from morality, the partaking of the
sacrament, even apart from the state of mind, becomes a holy
and saving act. Such, at least, is the result in practice, which
knows nothing of the sophistical distinctions of theology. In
general : wherever religion places itself in contradiction icith
reason, it places itself also in contradiction with the moral
sense. Only with the sense of truth coexists the sense of the
right and good. Depravity of understanding is always de
pravity of heart. He who deludes and cheats his under
standing has not a veracious, honourable heart ; sophistry
corrupts the whole man. And the doctrine of the Lord's
Supper is sophistry.

The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to
communion, involves the Untruth of the bodily presence of
God; and again the Truth of the objective existence of the
divine body involves the Untruth of the disposition.

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 245

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CONTEADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.

THE Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that contradic
tion of idealism and materialism, of subjectivism and objecti
vism, which belongs to the inmost nature of religion. But the
sacraments are nothing without Faith and Love. Hence the
contradiction in the sacraments carries us back to the primary
contradiction of Faith and Love.

The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the identity of
the divine being with the human ; but the form of religion, or
its apparent, conscious nature, is the distinction between them.
G od is the human being ; but he presents himself to the reli
gious consciousness as a distinct being. Now, that which re
veals the basis, the hidden essence of religion, is Love ; that
which constitutes its conscious form is Faith. Love identifies
man with God and God with man, consequently it identifies
man with man ; faith separates God from man, consequently it
separates man from man, for God is nothing else than the
idea of the species invested with a mystical form, the separa
tion of God from man is therefore the separation of man from
man, the unloosing of the social bond. By faith religion
places itself in contradiction with morality, with reason, with
the unsophisticated sense of truth in man ; by love, it opposes
itself again to this contradiction. Faith isolates God, it makes
him a particular, distinct being : love universalizes ; it makes
God a common being, the love of whom is one with the love of
man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion, a disunion
with himself, and by consequence an outward disunion also ;
but love heals the wounds which are made by faith in the heart
of man. Faith makes belief in its God a law : love is freedom,
it condemns not even the atheist, because it is itself atheistic,
itself denies, if not theoretically, at least practically, the exist
ence of a particular, individual God, opposed to man. Love
has God in itself: faith has God out of itself; it estranges God
from man, it makes him an external object.

246 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Faith, being inherently external, proceeds even to the adop
tion of outward fact as its object, and becomes historical faith.
It is therefore of the nature of faith that it can become a
totally external confession ; and that with mere faith, as such,
superstitious, magical effects are associated.* The devils be
lieve that God is, without ceasing to be devils. Hence a dis
tinction has been made between faith in God, and belief that
there is a God.f But even with this bare belief in the exist
ence of God, the assimilating power of love is intermingled ;
a power which by no means lies in the idea of faith as such, and
in so far as it relates to external things.

The only distinctions or judgments which are immanent to
faith, which spring out of itself, are the distinctions of right or
genuine, and wrong or false faith ; or in general, of belief and
unbelief. Faith discriminates thus : This is true, that is false.
And it claims truth to itself alone. Faith has for its object a
definite, specific truth, which is necessarily united with nega
tion. Faith is in its nature exclusive. One thing alone is
truth, one alone is God, one alone has the monopoly of being
the Son of God ; all else is nothing, error, delusion. Jehovah
alone is the true God ; all other gods are vain idols.

Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself; it rests
on a peculiar revelation of God ; it has not come to its posses
sions in an ordinary way, that way which stands open to all
men alike. What stands open to all is common, and for that
reason cannot form a special object of faith. That God is the
creator, all men could know from Nature ; but what this God is
in person, can be known only by special grace, is the object of
a special faith. And because he is only revealed in a peculiar
manner, the object of this faith is himself a peculiar being.
The God of the Christians is indeed the God of the heathens,
but with a wide difference : just such a difference as there is
between me as I am to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger,
w r ho only knows me at a distance. God as he is an object to
the Christians, is quite another than as he is an object to the
heathens. The Christians know God personally, face to face.
The heathens know only and even this is too large an admis
sion "what," and not "who," God is; for which reason they

* Hence the mere name of Christ has miraculous powers,
f " Gott glauben und an Gott glauben."

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 247

fell into idolatry. The identity of the heathens and Christians
before God is therefore altogether vague ; what the heathens
have in common with the Christians if indeed we consent to
be so liberal as to admit anything in common between them
is not that which is specifically Christian, not that which con
stitutes faith. In whatsoever the Christians are Christians,
therein they are distinguished from the heathens ;* and they
are Christians in virtue of their special knowledge of God ;
thus their mark of distinction is God. Speciality is the salt
which first gives a flavour to the common being. What a being
is in special, is the being itself; he alone knows me, who knows
me in specie. Thus the special God, God as he is an object
to the Christians, the personal God, is alone God. And this
God is unknown to heathens, and to unbelievers in general ; he
does not exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist for the
heathens ; but mediately, on condition that they cease to be
heathens, and become Christians. Faith makes man partial
and narrow ; it deprives him of the freedom and ability to esti
mate duly what is different from himself. Faith is imprisoned
within itself. It is true that the philosophical, or, in general,
any scientific theorist, also limits himself by a definite system.
But theoretic limitation, however fettered, short-sighted and
narrow-hearted it may be, has still a freer character than faith,
because the domain of theory is in itself a free one, because here
the ground of decision is the nature of things, argument, reason.
But faith refers the decision to conscience and interest, to the
instinctive desire of happiness; for its object is a special, per
sonal Being, urging himself on recognition, and making salva
tion dependent on that recognition.

Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity and
importance. The believer finds himself distinguished above
other men, exalted above the natural man ; he knows himself
to be a person of distinction, in the possession of peculiar pri
vileges ; believers are aristocrats, unbelievers plebeians. God
is this distinction and pre-eminence of believers above unbe
lievers, personified.f Because faith represents man's own

* " If I wish to be a Christian, I must believe and do what other people
do not believe or do." Luther (T. xvi. p. 569).

f Celsus makes it a reproach to the Christians that they boast : " Est Deus
et post ilium nos." (Origenes adv. Cels. ed. Hoeschelius. Aug. Vind. 1605,
p. 182.)

248 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nature as that of another being, the believer does not con
template his dignity immediately in himself, but in this sup
posed distinct person. The consciousness of his own pre
eminence presents itself as a consciousness of this person ; he
has the sense of his own dignity in this divine personality.*
As the servant feels himself honoured in the dignity of his
master, nay, fancies himself greater than a free, independent
man of lower rank than his master, so it is with the believer.f
He denies all merit in himself, merely that he may leave all
merit to his Lord, because his own desire of honour is satisfied
in the honour of his Lord. Faith is arrogant, but it is distin
guished from natural arrogance in this, that it clothes its feel
ing of superiority, its pride, in the idea of another person, for
whom the believer is an object of peculiar favour. This distinct
person, however, is simply his own hidden self, his personified,
contented desire of happiness : for he has no other qualities
than these, that he is the benefactor, the Redeemer, the Saviour,
qualities in which the believer has reference only to himself,
to his own eternal salvation. In fact, we have here the charac
teristic principle of religion, that it changes that which is natu
rally active into the passive. The heathen elevates himself, the
Christian feels himself elevated. The Christian converts into
a matter of feeling, of receptivity, what to the heathen is a mat
ter of spontaneity. The humility of the believer is an inverted
arrogance, an arrogance none the less because it has not the
appearance, the external characteristics of arrogance. He feels
himself pre-eminent : this pre-eminence, however, is not a result
of his activity, but a matter of grace ; he has been made pre
eminent ; he can do nothing towards it himself. He does not
make himself the end of his own activity, but the end, the ob
ject of God.

Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according to
the specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true God.
This Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the true, sole

* " I am proud and exulting on account of my blessedness and the for
giveness of my sins, but through what ? Through the glory and pride
of another, namely, the Lord Christ." Luther (T. ii. p. 344). " He that
glorieth let him glory in the Lord." 1 Cor. i. 31.

t A military officer who had been adjutant of the Russian general
Miinriich said : " When I was his adjutant I felt myself greater than now
that I command."

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 249

prophet, the only begotten Son of God. And this particular
conception thou must believe, if thou wouldst not forfeit thy
salvation. Faith is imperative. It is therefore necessary it
lies in the nature of faith that it be fixed as dogma. Dogma
only gives a formula to what faith had already on its tongue or
in its mind. That when once a fundamental dogma is esta
blished, it gives rise to more special questions, which must also
be thrown into a dogmatic form, that hence there results a
burdensome multiplicity of dogmas, this is certainly a fatal
consequence, but does not do away with the necessity that faith
should fix itself in dogmas, in order that every one may know
definitely what he must believe and how he can \vin salvation.

That which in the present day, even from the stand-point
of believing Christianity, is rejected, is compassionated as
an aberration, as a misinterpretation, or is even ridiculed, is
purely a consequence of the inmost nature of faith. Faith
is essentially illiberal, prejudiced; for it is concerned not only
with individual salvation, but with the honour of God. And
just as we are solicitous as to whether we show due honour to
a superior in rank, so it is with faith. The apostle Paul is
absorbed in the glory, the honour, the merits of Christ.
Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularity, lies in the nature
of faith. In food and other matters, indifferent to faith, it is
certainly liberal ; but by no means in relation to objects of
faith. He who is not for Christ is against him; that which is
not Christian is antichristian. But what is Christian? This
must be absolutely determined, this cannot be free. If the
articles of faith are set down in books which proceed from
various authors, handed down in the form of incidental,
mutually contradictory, occasional dicta, then dogmatic de
marcation and definition are even an external necessity.
Christianity owes its perpetuation to the dogmatic formulas of
the Church,

It is only the believing unbelief of modern times which hides
itself behind the Bible, and opposes the biblical dicta to dog
matic definitions, in order that it may set itself free from the
limits of dogma by arbitrary exegesis. But faith has already
disappeared, is become indifferent, when the determinate tenets
of faith are felt as limitations. It is only religious indifference
under the appearance of religion that makes the Bible, which
in its nature and origin is indefinite, a standard of faith, and
under the pretext of believing only the essential, retains

M 3

250 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nothing which deserves the name of faith; for example, sub
stituting for the distinctly characterized Son of God, held up
by the Church, the vague negative definition of a Sinless Man,
who can claim to be the Son of God in a sense applicable to no
other being, in a word, of a man, whom one may not trust
oneself to call either a man or a God. But that it is merely
indifference which makes a hiding-place for itself behind the
Bible, is evident from the fact that even what stands in the
Bible, if it contradicts the stand-point of the present day, is
regarded as not obligatory, or is even denied; nay, actions
which are essentially Christian, which are the logical conse
quences of faith, such as the separation of believers from un
believers, are now designated as unchristian.

The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging damnation
to heretics and unbelievers,* for this condemnation is involved
in the nature of faith. Faith at first appears to be only ^ln
unprejudiced separation of believers from unbelievers; but this
separation is a highly critical distinction. The believer has
God for him, the unbeliever, against him; it is only as a pos
sible believer that the unbeliever has God not against him;
and therein precisely lies the ground of the requirement that
he should leave the ranks of unbelief. But that which has God
against it is worthless, rejected, reprobate; for that which has
God against it is itself against God. To believe, is synony
mous with goodness; not to believe, with wickedness. Faith,
narrow and prejudiced, refers all unbelief to the moral disposi
tion. In its view the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of
obduracy, out of wickedness. f Hence faith has fellowship with
believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed
towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In faith
there lies a malignant principle.

It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-complacency
of Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of non-
christian nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their own.
It is only in the mode in which faith embodies itself that
Christians differ from the followers of other religions. The
distinction is founded only on climate or on natural tempera-

* To faith, so long as it has any vital heat, any character, the heretic is
always on a level with the unbeliever, with the atheist.

f Already in the New Testament the idea of disobedience is associated
with unbelief. " The cardinal wickedness is unbelief." Luther (xiii. p. 647).

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 251

ment. A warlike or ardently sensuous people will naturally
attest its distinctive religious character by deeds, by force of
arms. But the nature of faith as such is everywhere the same.
It is essential to faith to condemn, to anathematize. All
blessings, all good it accumulates on itself, on its God, as the
lover on his beloved; all curses, all hardship and evil it casts
on unbelief. The believer is blessed, well-pleasing to God, a
partaker of everlasting felicity; the unbeliever is accursed, re
jected of God and abjured by men: for what God rejects man
must not receive, must not indulge ; that would be a criticism
of the divine judgment. The Turks exterminate unbelievers
with fire and sword, the Christians with the flames of hell. But
the fires of the other world blaze forth into this, to glare through
the night of unbelief. As the believer already here below
anticipates the joys of heaven, so the flames of the abyss must
be seen to flash here as a foretaste of the awaiting hell, at
least in the moments when faith attains its highest enthusiasm.*
It is true that Christianity ordains no persecution of heretics,
still less conversion by force of arms. But so far as faith
anathematizes, it necessarily generates hostile dispositions,
the dispositions out of which the persecution of heretics arises.
To love the man who does not believe in Christ, is a sin against
Christ, is to love the enemy of Christ.f That which God,
which Christ does not love, man must not love; his love would
be a contradiction of the divine will, consequently a sin. God,
it is true, loves all men; but only when and because they are
Christians, or at least may be and desire to be such. To be a
Christian is to be beloved by God; not to be a Christian is to
be hated by God, an object of the divine anger. { The
Christian must therefore love only Christians others only
as possible Christians; he must only love what faith hallows
and blesses. Faith is the baptism of love. Love to man as

* God himself by no means entirely reserves the punishment of blas
phemers, of unbelievers, of heretics, for the future; he often punishes them
in this life also, " for the benefit of Christendom and the strengthening of
faith:" as, for example, the heretics Cerinthus and Arius. See Luther
(T. xiv.p. 13).

f " Si quis spiritum. Dei habet, illius versiculi recordetur : Nonne qui
oderunt te, Domine, oderam ?" (Psal. cxxxix. 21.) Bernhardus, Epist. (193)
ad magist. Yvonem Cardin.

1 " Qui Christum negat, negatur a Christo." Cyprian (Epst. E. 73
18. Edit. Gersdorf.).

252 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

man is only natural love. Christian love is supernatural,
glorified, sanctified love; therefore it loves only what is
Christian. The maxim, "Love your enemies," has reference
only to personal enemies, not to public enemies, the enemies
of God, the enemies of faith, unbelievers. He who loves the
men whom Christ denies, does not believe Christ, denies his
Lord and God. Faith abolishes the natural ties of humanity;
to universal, natural unity, it substitutes a particular unity.

Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the Bible,
" Judge not, that ye be not judged;" and that thus, as faith
leaves to God the judgment, so it leaves to him the sentence of
condemnation. This and other similar sayings have authority
only as the private law of Christians, not as their public law ;
belong only to ethics, not to dogmatics. It is an indication
of indifference to faith, to introduce such sayings into the
region of dogma. The distinction between the unbeliever and
the man is a fruit of modern philanthropy. To faith, the man
is merged in the believer; to it, the essential difference between
man and the brute rests onlyron religious belief. Faith alone
comprehends in itself all virtues which can make man pleasing
to God ; and God is the absolute measure, his pleasure the
highest law : the believer is thus alone the legitimate, normal
man, man as he ought to be, man as he is recognised by God.
Wherever we find Christians making a distinction between the
man and the believer, there the human mind has already
severed itself from faith; there man has value in himself,
independently of faith. Hence faith is true, unfeigned, only
where the specific difference of faith operates in all its severity.
If the edge of this difference is blunted, faith itself naturally
becomes indifferent, effete. Faith is liberal only in things
intrinsically indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul
presupposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles of faith.
Where everything is made to depend on the fundamental
articles of faith, there arises the distinction between essential
and non-essential belief. In the sphere of the non-essential
there is no law, there you are free. But obviously it is only
on condition of your leaving the rights of faith intact, that
faith allows you freedom.

It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, that faith
leaves judgment to God. It leaves to him only the moral
judgment with respect to faith, only the judgment as to its

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 253

moral character, as to whether the faith of Christians be feigned
or genuine. So far as classes are concerned, faith knows
already whom God will place on the right hand, and whom on
the left ; in relation to the persons who compose the classes
faith is uncertain ; but that believers are heirs of the Eternal
Kingdom is beyond all doubt. Apart from this, however, the
God who distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, the
condemning and rewarding God, is nothing else than faith
itself. What God condemns, faith condemns, and vice versa.
Faith is a consuming fire to its opposite.* This fire of faith
regarded objectively, is the anger of God, or what is the same
thing, hell ; for hell evidently has its foundation in the anger
of God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in its sentence of
damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of the
exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on un
believers.

Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who
is not for Christ is against him.t Faith knows only friends
or enemies, it understands no neutrality ; it is preoccupied
only with itself. Faith is essentially intolerant; essentially,
because with faith is always associated the illusion that its
cause is the cause of God, its honour his honour. The God
of faith is nothing else than the objective nature of faith faith
become an object to itself. Hence in the religious conscious
ness also the cause of faith and the cause of God. are identified.
God himself is interested : the interest of faith is the nearest
interest of God. " He who toucheth you," says the prophet
Zachariah, " toucheth the apple of His eye."J That which
wounds faith, wounds God, that which denies faith, denies
God himself.

Faith knows no other distinction than that between the
service of God and the service of idols. Faith alone gives

* Thus the apostle Paul cursed " Elymas the sorcerer" with blindness,
because he withstood the faith. Acts xiii. 8 11.

f Historically considered, this saying, as well as the others cited pp. 384,
385, may be perfectly justified. But the Bible is not to be regarded as
an historical or temporal, but as an eternal book.

" Tenerrimam partem humani corporis nominavit, ut apertissime in-
telligeremus, eum (Deum) tarn parva Sanctorum suorum contumelia. laedi,
quam parvi verberis tactu humani visus acies laeditur." Salvianus, 1. 8.
de Gubern. Dei.

25 4 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

honour to God ; unbelief withdraws from God that which is
due to him. Unbelief is an injury to God, religious high
treason. The heathens worship demons ; their gods are devils.
" I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they
sacrifice to devils, and not to God : and I would not that ye
should have fellowship with devils."* But the devil is the
negation of God ; he hates God, wills that there should be no
God. Thus faith is blind to what there is of goodness and
truth lying at the foundation of heathen worship; it sees in
everything which does not do homage to its God, i.e., to itself,
a worship of idols, and in the worship of idols only the work
of the devil. Faith must therefore, even in feeling, be only
negative towards this negation of God : it is by inherent
necessity intolerant towards its opposite, and in general towards
whatever does not thoroughly accord with itself. Tolerance
on its part would be intolerance towards God, who has the
right to unconditional, undivided sovereignty. Nothing ought
to subsist, nothing to exist, which does not acknowledge
God, which does not acknowledge faith : " That at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and
things on earth, and things under the earth; and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory
of the Father." f Therefore faith postulates a future, a world
where faith has no longer an opposite, or where at least this
opposite exists only in order to enhance the self-complacency
of triumphant faith. Hell sweetens the joys of happy be
lievers. " The elect will come forth to behold the torments
of the ungodly, and at this spectacle they will not be smitten
with sorrow ; on the contrary, while they see the unspeakable
sufferings of the ungodly, they, intoxicated with joy, will thank
God for their own salvation."!

Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue even

* 1 Cor. x. 20.

f Phil. ii. 10, 11. " When the name of Jesus Christ is heard, all that is
unbelieving and ungodly in heaven or on earth shall be terrified." Luther
(T. xvi. p. 322). " In morte pagani Christianus gloriatur, quia Christus
glorificatur," Divus Bernardus. Sermo exhort, ad Milites Templi.
J Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 50, c. 4. But this passage is by no means a de
claration of Peter Lombard himself. He is far too modest, timid and de
pendent on the authorities of Christianity, to have ventured to advance
such a tenet on his own account. No ! This position is a universal decla
ration, a characteristic expression of Christian, of believing love, The doc-

THE CONTKADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 255

in sin, truth in error. It is only since the power of faith has
been supplanted by the power of the natural unity of mankind,
the power of reason, of humanity, that truth has been seen
even in polytheism, in idolatry generally, or at least that
there has been any attempt to explain on positive grounds
what faith, in its bigotry, derives only from the devil. Hence
love is reconcilable with reason alone, not with faith ; for as
reason, so also love is free, universal, in its nature ; whereas
faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only where reason rules, does
universal love rule ; reason is itself nothing else than universal
love. It was faith, not love, not reason, which invented Hell.
To love, Hell is a horror ; to reason, an absurdity. It would
be a pitiable mistake to regard Hell as a mere aberration of
faith, a false faith. Hell stands already in the Bible. Faith
is everywhere like itself; at least positive religious faith, faith
in the sense in which it is here taken, and must be taken
unless we would mix with it the elements of reason, of culture,
a mixture which indeed renders the character of faith
unrecognisable.

Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither do
those dispositions which result from faith, neither do the
actions which result from those dispositions. Faith condemns,
anathematizes ; all the actions, all the dispositions, which con
tradict love, humanity, reason, accord with faith. All the
horrors of Christian religious history, which our believers aver
not to be due to Christianity, have truly arisen out of Chris
tianity, because they have arisen out of faith. This repudiation
of them is indeed a necessary consequence of faith ; for faith
claims for itself only what is good, everything bad it casts on the
shoulders of unbelief, or of misbelief, or of men in general. But
this very denial of faith that it is itself to blame for the evil in
Christianity, is a striking proof that it is really the originator
of that evil, because it is a proof of the narrowness, partiality,

trine of some Fathers of the church, e.g. of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa,
that the punishment of the damned would have an end, sprung not out of
Christian or Church doctrine, but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine
that the punishment of hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic
but also hy the Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess, art. 17.) A precious
example of the exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is the
passage cited from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. s. 547),
according to which not infants in general, but those of Christians exclusively,
would have a share in the divine grace and blessings if they died unbaptized.

256 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

and intolerance, which render it well-disposed only to itself, to
its own adherents, but ill-disposed, unjust towards others.
According to faith, the good which Christians do, is not done
by the man, but by the Christian, by faith ; but the evil which
Christians do, is not done by the Christian, but by the man.
The evil which faith has wrought in Christendom thus cor
responds to the nature of faith, of faith as it is described in
the oldest and most sacred records of Christianity, of the
Bible. " If any man preach any other gospel unto you than
that ye have received, let him be accursed,"* avaQt/ma <mo,
Gal. i. 9. "Be ye not unequally yoked together Mdth
unbelievers : for what fellowship hath righteousness with
unrighteousness ? and what communion hath light with dark
ness ? And what concord hath Christ with Belial ? or what
part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? And what agree
ment hath the temple of God with idols ? for ye are the temple
of the living God ; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and
walk in them ; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and
I will receive you," 2 Cor. iv. 14 17. " When the Lord Jesus
shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in
flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and
that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall
be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of
the Lord, and from the glory of his power ; when he shall come
to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that
believe," 2 Thess. i. 7 10. " Without faith it is impossible
to please God," Heb. xi. 6. " God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him,
should not perish, but have everlasting life," John iii. 16.
" Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God : and every spirit that confesseth not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God : and this is
the spirit of antichrist," 1 John iv. 2, 8. " Who is a liar, but
he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist
that denieth the Father and the Son," 1 John ii. 22. " Who
soever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,
hath not God : he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he

* "Fugite, abhorrete hunc doctorem." But why should I flee from
him? because the anger, i.e., the curse of God rests on his head.

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 257

hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto
you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your
house, neither bid him God speed : for he that biddeth him
God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds," 2 John ix. 11.
Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love which he
celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. " God is
the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe,"
1 Tim. iv. 10. A fatal " specially !" " Let us do good unto
all men, especially unto them who are of the household of
faith," Gal. vi. 10. An equally pregnant "especially!" "A
man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition
reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth,
being condemned of himself,"* Titus iii. 10, 11. "He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the wrath of God
abideth on him,"f John iii. 30. "And whosoever shall offend
one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
cast into the sea," Mark ix. 42 ; Matt, xviii. 6. " He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth
not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. The distinction between
faith as it is expressed in the Bible and faith as it has exhibited
itself in later times, is only the distinction between the bud and
the plant. In the bud I cannot so plainly see what is obvious
in the matured plant; and yet the plant lay already in the bud.
But that which is obvious, sophists of course will not con
descend to recognise ; they confine themselves to the distinction
between explicit and implicit existence, wilfully overlooking
their essential identity.

Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecution,
where the power of faith meets with no contradiction, where it
does not find itself in collision with a power foreign to faith,

* There necessarily results from this a sentiment which e.g. Cyprian
expresses: " Si vero ubique haeretici niliil aliud quam adversarii et antichrist!
nominantur, si vitandi et perversi et a semet ipsis damnati prommtiantur;
quale est ut videantur damnandi a nobis non esse, quos constat apostolica
contestatioiie a semet ipsis damnatos esse." Epistol. 74. (Edit, cit.)

f The passage Luke ix. 56, as the parallel of which is cited John iii. 17,
receives its completion and rectification in the immediately following v. 18:
" He that believeth in him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is
condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only
begotten Son of God,"

258 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

tlie power of love, of humanity, of the sense of justice. Faith
left to itself necessarily exalts itself above the laws of natural
morality. The doctrine of faith is the doctrine of duty
towards God, the highest duty of faith. By how much God
is higher than man, by so much higher are duties to God than
duties towards man ; and duties towards God necessarily come
into collision with common human duties. God is not only
believed in, conceived as the universal being, the Father of
men, as Love : such faith is the faith of love ; he is also
represented as a personal being, a being by himself. And so
far as God is regarded as separate from man, as an indivi
dual being, so far are duties to God separated from duties
to man: faith is, in the religious sentiment, separated from
morality, from love.* Let it not be replied that faith in God
is faith in love, in goodness itself; and that thus faith is itself
an expression of a morally good disposition. In the idea
of personality, ethical definitions vanish ; they are only
collateral things, mere accidents. The chief thing is the
subject, the divine Ego. Love to God himself, since it is love
to a personal being, is not a moral but a personal love. Innu
merable devout hymns breathe nothing but love to the Lord ;
but in this love there appears no spark of an exalted moral
idea or disposition.

Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a divine
personality. Hence it makes salvation dependent on itself,
not on the fulfilment of common human duties. But that
which has eternal salvation as its consequence, necessarily
becomes in the mind of man the chief thing. As therefore
inwardly morality is subordinate to faith, so it must also be
outwardly, practically subordinate, nay sacrificed, to faith. It is

* Faith, it is true, is not " without good works," nay, according to
Luther's declaration, it is as impossible to separate faith from works as to
separate heat and light from fire. Nevertheless, and this is the main point,
good works do not belong to the article of justification before God, i.e., men
are justified and " saved without works, through faith alone." 'Faith is
thus expressly distinguished from good works; faith alone avails before
God, not good works; faith alone is the cause of salvation, not virtue:
thus faith alone has substantial significance, virtue only accidental; i.e.,
faith alone has religious significance, divine authority and not morality. It
is well known that many have gone so far as to maintain that good works
are not necessary, but are even "injurious, obstructive to salvation." Quite
correctly.

THE CONTKADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 259

inevitable that there should be actions in which faith exhibits
itself in distinction from morality, or rather in contradiction
with it ; actions which are morally bad, but which according
to faith are laudable, because they have in view the advantage
of faith. All salvation depends on faith : it follows that all
again depends on the salvation of faith. If faith is endangered,
eternal salvation and the honour of God are endangered.
Hence faith absolves from everything ; for, strictly considered,
it is the sole subjective good in man, as God is the sole good
and positive being : the highest commandment therefore is :
Believe!*

For the very reason that there is no natural, inherent con
nexion between faith and the moral disposition, that, on the
contrary, it lies in the nature of faith that it is indifferent to
moral duties,t that it sacrifices the love of man to the honour
of God, for this reason it is required that faith should have
good works as its consequence, that it should prove itself by
love. Faith destitute of love, or indifferent to love, contradicts
the reason, the natural sense of right in man, moral feeling,
on which love immediately urges itself as a law. Hence faith,
in contradiction with its intrinsic character, has limits imposed
on it by morality : a faith which effects nothing good, which
does not attest itself by love, comes to be held as not a true
and living faith. But this limitation does not arise out of
faith itself. It is the power of love, a power independent of
faith, which gives laws to it; for moral character is here

*" Causa fidei .... exorbitantem et irregularem prorsus favorem habet
et ab omni jure deviare, omnem captivare rationem, nee judiciis laicorum
ratione corrupta utentium subjecta creditur. Etenim Causa fidei ad multa
obligat, qu.se alias sunt voluntaria, multa, imo infinita remittit, quse alias
prsecepta; quse alius valide gesta annullat, et contra quse alias nulla et
irrita, fiunt valida .... ex jure canonico." J. H. Boehmeri (Jus Eccles.
lib. v. tit. vii. 32. See also 44 et seq.).

f " Placetta de Fide, ii. II ne faut pas chercher dans la nature des choses
memes la veritable cause de 1'inseparabilite de la foi et de la piete. II faut,
si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement dans la volonte de Dieu ....
Bene facit et nobiscum sentit, cum illam conjunctionem (i.e., of sanctity
or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei voluntate et dispositione repetit;
nee id novum est ejus inventum, sed cum antiquioribus Theologis
nostris commune." J. A. Ernesti. (Vindicise arbitrii divini. Opusc.
theol. p. 297.) " Si quis dixerit .... qui fidem sine charitate habet,
Christianum non esse, anathema sit." Concil. Trid. (Sess. vi. de Justif.
can. 28).

260 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

made the criterion of the genuineness of faith, the truth of faith
is made dependent on the truth of ethics : a relation which
however is subversive of faith.

Faith does indeed make man happy ; but thus much is cer
tain : it infuses into him no really moral dispositions. If it
ameliorate man, if it have moral dispositions as its consequence,
this proceeds solely from the inward conviction of the irrever
sible reality of morals : a conviction independent of religious
faith. It is morality alone, and by no means faith, that cries
out in the conscience of the believer : thy faith is nothing, if
it does not make thee good. It is not to be denied that the
assurance of eternal salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the sense
of favour and release from all punishment, inclines man to do
good. The man who has this confidence possesses all things ;
he is happy ;* he becomes indifferent to the good things of this
world ; no envy, no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can
enslave him ; everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of
heavenly grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do
not proceed from essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not
love, not the object of love, man, the basis of all morality, which
is the motive of his good works. No ! he does good not for
the sake of goodness itself, not for the sake of man, but for the
sake of God ; out of gratitude to God, who has done all for
him, and for whom therefore he must on his side do all that
lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because it wounds God,
his Saviour, his Benefactor, t The idea of virtue is here the
idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has sacrificed himself for
man; therefore man must sacrifice himself to God. The
greater the sacrifice the better the deed. The more anything
contradicts man and Nature, the greater the abnegation, the
greater is the virtue. This merely negative idea of goodness
has been especially realized and developed by Catholicism. Its
highest moral idea is that of sacrifice ; hence the high signifi
cance attached to the denial of sexual love, to virginity.

* See on this subject Luther, e.g. T. xiv. p. 286.

f " Therefore good works must follow faith, as an expression of thank
fulness to God." Apol. der Augs. Conf. art, 3. " How can I make a
return to thee for thy deeds of love in works ? yet it is something accept
able to thee, if I quench and tame the lusts of the flesh, that they may not
anew inflame my heart with fresh sins." " If sin bestirs itself, I am not
overcome; a glance at the cross of Jesus destroys its charms." Gesangbuch.
der Evangel. Briidergemeinen (Moravian Hymn-book).

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 261

Chastity, or rather virginity, is the characteristic virtue of the
Catholic faith, for this reason, that it has no basis in Nature.
It is the most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue,
the virtue of supranaturalistic faith ; to faith, the highest
virtue, but in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes
that a virtue which intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue : it
has therefore no sense of virtue ; it must necessarily depre
ciate true virtue because it so exalts a merely apparent virtue,
because it is guided by no idea but that of the negation, the
contradiction of human nature.

But although the deeds opposed to love which mark Chris
tian religious history, are in accordance with Christianity, and
its antagonists are therefore right in imputing to it the horrible
actions resulting from dogmatic creeds ; those deeds nevertheless
at the same time contradict Christianity, because Christianity
is not only a religion of faith, but of love also, pledges us not
only to faith, but to love. Uncharitable actions, hatred of
heretics, at once accord and clash with Christianity ? how is that
possible ? Perfectly. Christianity sanctions both the actions
that spring out of love, and the actions that spring from faith
without love. If Christianity had made love only its law, its
adherents would be right, the horrors of Christian religious
history could not be imputed to it ; if it had made faith only
its law, the reproaches of its antagonists would be uncondition
ally, unrestrictedly true. But Christianity has not made love
free ; it has not raised itself to the height of accepting love as
absolute. And it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give
it, because it is a religion, and hence subjects love to the
dominion of faith. Love is only the exoteric, faith the esoteric
doctrine of Christianity ; love is only the morality, faith the
religion of the Christian religion.

God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Christianity.
But the contradiction of faith and love is contained in the very
proposition. Love is only a predicate, God the subject. What,
then, is this subject in distinction from love ? And I must
necessarily ask this question, make this distinction. The
necessity of the distinction would be done away with only if it
were said conversely : Love is God, love is the absolute being.
Thus love would take the position of the substance. In the
proposition " God is love," the subject is the darkness in which
faith shrouds itself; the predicate is the light, which first illu
minates the intrinsically dark subject. In the predicate I affirm

262 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

love, in the subject faith. Love does not alone fill my soul: I
leave a place open for my uncharitableness by thinking of God
as a subject in distinction from the predicate. It is therefore
inevitable that at one moment I lose the thought of love, at
another the thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the
personality of God to the divinity of love, at another the divinity
of love to the personality of God. The history of Christianity
has given sufficient proof of this contradiction. Catholicism,
especially, has celebrated Love as the essential deity with so
much enthusiasm, that to it the personality of God has been
entirely lost in this love. But at the same time it has sacri
ficed love to the majesty of faith. Faith clings to the self-sub
sistence of God ; love does away with it. " God is love,"
means, God is nothing by himself: he who loves, gives up his
egoistical independence ; he makes what he loves indispensable,
essential to his existence. But while Self is being sunk in the
depths of love, the idea of the Person rises up again and dis
turbs the harmony of the divine and human nature which had
been established by love. Faith advances with its pretensions,
and allows only just so much to Love as belongs to a predicate
in the ordinary sense. It does not permit love freely to unfold
itself; it makes love the abstract, and itself the concrete, the
fact, the basis. The love of faith is only a rhetorical figure, a
poetical fiction of faith, faith in ecstasy. If Faith conies to
itself, Love is fled.

This theoretic contradiction must necessarily manifest itself
practically. Necessarily ; for in Christianity love is tainted by
faith, it is not free, it is not apprehended truly. A love which
is limited by faith is an untrue love.* Love knows no law but
itself; it is divine through itself; it needs not the sanction of
faith ; it is its own basis. The love which is bound by faith,
is a narrow-hearted, false love, contradicting the idea of love,
i.e., self- contradictory, a love which has only a semblance of
holiness, for it hides in itself the hatred that belongs to faith ;
it is only benevolent so long as faith is not injured. Hence, in
this contradiction with itself, in order to retain the semblance
of love, it falls into the most diabolical sophisms, as we see in

* The only limitation which is not contradictory to the nature of love is
the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. The love which despises
the stringency, the law of the intelligence, is theoretically false and prac
tically noxious.

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 263

Augustine's apology for the persecution of heretics. Love is
limited by faith ; hence it does not regard even the uncharitable
actions which faith suggests as in contradiction with itself; it
interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed for the sake
of faith as deeds of love. And it necessarily falls into such
contradictions, because the limitation of love by faith is itself
a contradiction. If it once is subjected to this limitation, it
has given up its own judgment, its inherent measure and crite
rion, its self-subsistence ; it is delivered up without power of
resistance to the promptings of faith.

Here we have again an example, that much which is not
found in the letter of the Bible, is nevertheless there in prin
ciple. We find the same contradictions in the Bible as in
Augustine, as in Catholicism generally; only that in the latter
they are definitely declared, they are developed into a conspi
cuous, and therefore revolting existence. The Bible curses
through faith, blesses through love. But the only love it knows
is a love founded on faith. Thus here already it is a love which
curses, an unreliable love, a love which gives me no guarantee
that it will not turn into hatred; for if I do not acknow
ledge the articles of faith I am out of the sphere of love, a child
of hell, an object of anathema, of the anger of God, to whom
the existence of unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye.
Christian love has not overcome hell, because it has not over
come faith. Love is in itself unbelieving, faith unloving. And
love is unbelieving because it knows nothing more divine than
itself, because it believes only in itself as absolute truth.

Christian love is already signalized as a particular, limited
love, by the very epithet, Christian. But love is in its nature
universal. So long as Christian love does not renounce its
qualification of Christian, does not make love, simply, its
highest law, so long is it a love which is injurious to the sense
of truth, for the very office of love is to abolish the distinction
between Christianity and so-called heathenism; so long is it
a love which by its particularity is in contradiction with the
nature of love, an abnormal, loveless love, which has therefore
long been justly an object of sarcasm. True love is sufficient
to itself; it needs no special title, no authority. Love is the
universal law of intelligence and Nature ; it is nothing else
than the realization of the unity of the species through the
medium of moral sentiment. To found this love on the name
of a person, is only possible by the association of superstitious

264 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ideas, either of a religious or speculative character. For with
superstition is always associated particularism, and with par
ticularism, fanaticism. Love can only be founded on the
unity of the species, the unity of intelligence on the nature
of mankind ; then only is it a well-grounded love, safe in its
principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by the original source
of love, out of which the love of Christ himself arose. The love
of Christ was itself a derived love. He loved us not out of
himself, by virtue of his own authority, but by virtue of our
common human nature. A love which is based on his person
is a particular, exclusive love, which extends only so far as the
acknowledgment of this person extends, a love which does not
rest on the proper ground of love. Are we to love each other
because Christ loved us? Such love would be an affected,
imitative love. Can we truly love each other only if we love
Christ? Is Christ the cause of love? Is he not rather the
apostle of love? Is not the ground of his love the unity of
human nature? Shall I love Christ more than mankind? Is
not such love a chimerical love? Can I step beyond the idea
of the species? Can I love anything higher than humanity?
What ennobled Christ was love ; whatever qualities he had, he
held in fealty to love ; he was not the proprietor of love, as he
is represented to be in all superstitious conceptions. The idea
of love is an independent idea ; I do not first deduce it from
the life of Christ ; on the contrary, I revere that life only
because I find it accordant with the law, the idea of love.

This is already proved historically by the fact that the idea
of love was by no means first introduced into the consciousness
of mankind with andby Christianity, is by no means peculiarly
Christian. The horrors of the Roman Empire present them
selves with striking significance in company with the appear
ance of this idea. The empire of policy which united men
after a manner corresponding with its own idea, was coming to
its necessary end. Political unity is a unity of force. The
despotism of Rome must turn in upon itself, destroy itself. But
it was precisely through this catastrophe of political existence
that man released himself entirely from the heart- stifling toils
of politics. In the place of Rome, appeared the idea of
humanity; to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of love.
Even the Jews, by imbibing the principle of humanity con
tained in Greek culture, had by this time mollified their
malignant religious separatism. Philo celebrates love as the

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 265

highest virtue. The extinction of national differences lay in
the idea of humanity itself. Thinking minds had very early
overstepped the civil and political separation of man from man.
Aristotle distinguishes the man from the slave, and places the
slave, as a man, on a level with his master, uniting them in
friendship. Epictetus, the slave, was a Stoic; Antoninus, the
emperor, was a Stoic also * thus did philosophy unite men. The
Stoics taught* that man was not born for his own sake, but
for the sake of others, i.e., for love : a principle which implies
infinitely more than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor
Antoninus, which enjoined the love of enemies. The practical
principle of the Stoics is so far the principle of love. The
world is to them one city, men its citizens. Seneca, in the
sublimest sayings, extols love, clemency, humanity, especially
towards slaves. Thus political rigour and patriotic narrowness
were on the wane.

Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these human
tendencies ; a popular, consequently a religious, and certainly
a most intense manifestation of this new principle of love.
That which elsewhere made itself apparent in the process of
culture, expressed itself here as religious feeling, as a matter
of faith. Christianity thus reduced a general unity to a par
ticular one, it made love collateral to faith ; and by this
means it placed itself in contradiction with universal love.
The unity was not referred to its true origin. National differ
ences indeed disappeared ; but in their place difference of faith,
the opposition of Christian and un- Christian, more vehement
than a national antagonism and also more malignant, made its
appearance in history.

All love founded on a special historical phenomenon con
tradicts, as has been said, the nature of love, which endures
no limits, which triumphs over all particularity. Man is to be
loved for man's sake. Man is an object of love because he is
an end in himself, because he is a rational and loving being.
This is the law of the species, the law of the intelligence. Love
should be immediate, undetermined by anything else than its ob
ject; nay, only as such is it love. But if I interpose between
my fellow-man and myself the idea of an" individuality, in whom
the idea of the species is supposed to be already realized, I

* The Peripatetics also ; who founded love, even that towards all men,
not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle.

N

266 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.

annihilate the very soul of love, I disturb the unity by the idea
of a third external to us ; for in that case my fellow-man is an
object of love to me only on account of his resemblance or re
lation to this model, not for his own sake. Here all the con
tradictions reappear which we have in the personality of God,
where the idea of the personality by itself, without regard to the
qualities which render it worthy of love and reverence, fixes
itself in the consciousness and feelings. Love is the subjec
tive reality of the species, as reason is its objective reality. In
love, in reason, the need of an intermediate person disappears.
Christ is nothing but an image, under which the unity of the
species has impressed itself on the popular consciousness.
Christ loved men : he wished to bless and unite them all without
distinction of sex, age, rank, or nationality. Christ is the love
of mankind to itself embodied in an image in accordance
with the nature of religion as we have developed it or con
templated as a person, but a person who (we mean, of course,
as a religious object) has only the significance of an image,
who is only ideal. For this reason love is pronounced to be the
characteristic mark of the disciples. But love, as has been
said, is nothing else than the active proof, the realization of
the unity of the race, through the medium of the moral dispo
sition. The species is not an abstraction; it exists in feeling,
in the moral sentiment, in the energy of love. It is the species
which infuses love into me. A loving heart is the heart of the
species throbbing in the individual. Thus Christ, as the
consciousness of love, is the consciousness of the species. We
are all one in Christ. Christ is the consciousness of our
identity. He therefore who loves man for the sake of man,
who rises to the love of the species, to universal love, adequate
to the nature of the species,* he is a Christian, is Christ him
self. He does what Christ did, what made Christ Christ.
Thus, where there arises the consciousness of the species as a
species, the idea of humanity as a whole, Christ disappears,
without, however, his true nature disappearing ; for he was the
substitute for the consciousness of the species, the image under
which it was made present to the people, and became the law
of the popular life.

* Active love is and must of course always be particular and limited, i.e.,
directed to one's neighbour. But it is yet in its nature universal, since it
loves man for man's sake, in the name of the race. Christian love, on the
contrary, is in its nature exclusive.

CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 267

CHAPTEE XXVII.
CONCLUDING APPLICATION.

IN the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just
been exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of
necessity that we should raise ourselves above Christianity,
above the peculiar stand-point of all religion. We have
shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether
human ; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom ;
that the secret of theology is anthropology ; that the absolute
mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is
not conscious that its elements are human ; on the contrary, it
places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does not
admit that its elements are human. The necessary turning-
point of history is therefore the open confession, that the con
sciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of
the species ; that man can and should raise himself only above
the limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the
positive essential conditions of his species ; that there is no
other essence which man can think, dream of, imagine, feel,
believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute, than the
essence of human nature itself.*

Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, but
a critical one; we only separate the true from the false; though
we grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new
truth, essentially different from the old. Religion is the first form
of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the
traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. But that which
in religion holds the first place, namely, God, is, as we have
shown, in itself and according to truth, the second, for it is only

* Including external Nature; for as man belongs to the essence of Nature,
in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of
man, in opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our
"absolute" philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. Only by uniting
man with Nature can we conquer the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity.

N2

268 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the nature of man regarded objectively; and that which to re
ligion is the second, namely, man, must therefore be consti
tuted and declared the first. Love to man must be no derivative
love ; it must be original. If human nature is the highest
nature to man, then practically also the highest and first law
must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est :
this is the great practical principle : this is the axis on
which revolves the history of the world. The relations of
child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and friend,
in general, of man to man, in short, all the moral relations
are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its essential, sub
stantial relations, throughout of a divine nature. Its religious
consecration is not first conferred by the blessing of the priest.
But the pretension of religion is that it can hallow an object by
its essentially external co-operation ; it thereby assumes to be
itself the only holy power ; besides itself it knows only earthly,
ungodly relations; hence it comes forward in order to con
secrate them and make them holy.

But marriage we mean, of course, marriage as the free bond
of love* is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the union
which is therein effected. That alone is a religious marriage,
which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of
marriage of love. And so it is with all moral relations. Then
only are they moral, then only are they enjoyed in amoral spirit,
when they are regarded as sacred in themselves. True friend
ship exists only when the boundaries of friendship are preserved
with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientious
ness with which the believer watches over the dignity of his
God. Let friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred,
marriage sacred, sacred the well-being of every man; but
let them be sacred in and by themselves.

In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the com
mandments of God ; morality is even made the criterion of
piety ; but ethics have nevertheless a subordinate rank, they
have not in themselves a religious significance. This belongs
only to faith. Above morality hovers God, as a being distinct

* Yes, only as the free bond of love; for a marriage the bond of which is
merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction of
love, in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously
willed, self-sufficing, is not a true marriage, and therefore riot a truly moral
marriage,

CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 269

from man, a being to whom the best is due, while the remnants
only fall to the share of man. All those dispositions which
ought to be devoted to life, to man, all the best powers of
humanity, are lavished on the being who wants nothing. The
real cause is converted into an impersonal means, a merely
conceptional, imaginary cause usurps the place of the true one.
Man thanks God for those benefits which have been rendered
to him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The
gratitude which he expresses to his benefactor is only osten
sible; it is paid, not to him, but to God. He is thankful,
grateful to God, but unthankful to man.* Thus is the moral
sentiment subverted in religion ! Thus does man sacrifice
man to God ! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a
rude, material expression of the inmost secret of religion.
Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to God, such
sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence
as the chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God,
and it is so on extraordinary occasions; the supposition being
that this is the way to show him the greatest honour. If Chris
tianity no longer, at least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to
its God, this arises, to say nothing of other reasons, from the fact
that physical existence is no longer regarded as the highest good
Hence the soul, the emotions are now offered to God, because
these are held to be something higher. But the common case is,
that in religion man sacrifices some duty towards man such as
that of respecting the life of his fellow, of being grateful to him
to a religious obligation, sacrifices his relation to man to his
relation to God. The Christians, by the idea that God is without
wants, and that he is only an object of pure adoration, have
certainly done away with many pernicious conceptions. But
this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical idea, which is
by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. When the
need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the sub
jective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness, and

* " Because God does good through government, great men and creatures
in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures and not on the Creator;
they do not look from the creature to the Creator. Hence it came that the
heathens made gods of kings For they cannot and will not per
ceive that the work or the benefit conies from God, and not merely from the
creature, though the latter is a means, through which God works, helps us,
and gives to us." Luther (T. iv. p. 237).

270 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express
words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition
corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper,
in order to establish reciprocity.* All the positive definitions
of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks
of God, because God thinks of him ; he loves God, because
God has first loved him. God is jealous of man ; religion is
jealous of morality ;f it sucks away the best forces of morality;
it renders to man only the things that are man's, but to God the
things that are God's; and to Him is rendered true, living
emotion, the heart.

When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to
religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law respected,
this has not its foundation in religion, but in the original,
natural sense of morality and right, to which the true
social relations are sacred as such. He to whom the Eight is
not holy for its own sake, will never be made to feel it sacred
by religion. Property did not become sacred because it was
regarded as a divine institution ; but it was regarded as a divine
institution because it was felt to be in itself sacred. Love is
not holy, because it is a predicate of God, but it is a predicate
of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do not
worship the light or the fountain, because it is a gift of God,

* " They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me shall be
lightly esteemed." 1 Sam. ii. 30. " Jam se, o bone pater, vermis vilissimus
et odio dignissimus sernpiterno, tamen confidit amari, quoniam se sentit

amare, imo quia se amari prsesentit, non redamare confunditur

Nemo itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam amat." Bernardus ad Thomam
(Epist. 107). A very fine and pregnant sentence. If I exist not for God,
God exists not for me ; if I do not love, I am not loved. The passive is
the active certain of itself, the object is the subject certain of itself. To
love is to be man, to be loved is to be God. I am loved, says God; I love,
says man. It is not until later that this is reversed, that the passive trans
forms itself into the active, and conversely.

"|" " The Lord spake to Gideon : The people are too many, that are with
thee, that I should give Midian into their hands; Israel might glorify
itself against me and say : My hand has delivered me," i. e., " Ne Israel
sibi tribuat, quas mini debentur." Judges vii. 2. " Thus saith the Lord :
Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. But blessed is the man that
trusteth in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord." Jer. xvii. 5. " God
desires not our gold, body and possessions, but has given these to the
emperor, (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state,) and to us
through the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in
man, he has reserved for himself; this must be our offering to God that
we believe in him." Luther (xvi. p. 505).

CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 271

but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man,
because it refreshes the sufferer ; on account of this excellent
quality they pay it divine honours.

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right
is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, un
just, infamous things can be justified and established. I can
found morality on theology only when I myself have already
defined the divine being by means of morality. In the contrary
case, I have no criterion of the moral and immoral, but merely
an immoral, arbitrary basis, from which I may deduce anything
I please. Thus, if I would found morality on God, I must
first of all place it in God : for Morality, Eight, in short, all
substantial relations, have their only basis in themselves, can
only have a real foundation such as truth demands when
they are thus based. To place anything in God, or to derive
anything from God, is nothing more than to withdraw it from
the test of reason, to institute it as indubitable, unassailable,
sacred, without rendering an account why. Hence self-delusion,
if not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts to
establish morality, right, on theology. Where we are in
earnest about the right we need no incitement or support from
above. We need no Christian rule of political right ; we need
only one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true,
the good, has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its
quality. Where man is in earnest about ethics, they have in
themselves the validity of a divine power. If morality has no
foundation in itself, there is no inherent necessity for morality;
morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of
religion.

Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to
religion is simply to destroy an illusion : an illusion, how
ever, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the con
trary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind; which
deprives man as well of the power of real life, as of the genuine
sense of truth and virtue ; for even love, in itself the deepest,
truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely
ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives itself to man only
for God's sake, so that it is given only in appearance to man,
but in reality to God.

And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious
relations regard that as an end which religion supposes to be
a means exalt that into the primary which in religion is sub-

272 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ordinate, the accessory, the condition, at once we have de
stroyed the illusion, and the unclouded light of truth streams
in upon us. The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's
Supper, which are the characteristic symbols of the Christian
religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this truth.

The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by which
the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this conception
it is placed in contradiction with reason, with the truth of
things. On the one hand, there is virtue in the objective,
natural quality of water; on the other, there is none, but it is
a merely arbitrary medium of divine grace and omnipotence.
We free ourselves from these and other irreconcilable contra
dictions, we give a true significance to Baptism, only by re
garding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism
should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water
on man. Water has in fact not merely physical effects,
but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects
on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities,
but in water the scales fall from his eyes : he sees, he thinks,
more clearly ; he feels himself freer ; water extinguishes the
fire of appetite. How many saints have had recourse to the
natural qualities of water, in order to overcome the assaults of
the devil ! What was denied by Grace has been granted by
Nature. Water plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in
moral and mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is
the first, though the lowest of virtues.* In the stream of
water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest
means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of
chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the
objective life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a

* Christian baptism also is obviously only a relic of the ancient Nature-
worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a means of religious purifi
cation. (S. Rhode: Die heilige Sage, &c. pp. 305, 426.) Here, however,
water baptism had a much truer, and consequently a deeper meaning, than
with the Christians, because it rested on the natural power and value of
water. But indeed for these simple views of Nature which characterized the
old religions, our speculative as well as theological supranaturalism has
neither sense nor understanding. When therefore the Persians, the
Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious
duty, they were herein far wiser than the Christian saints, who attested
the supranaturalistic principle of their religion by physical impurity.
Supranaturalism in theory becomes an ti- naturalism in practice. Supra-
naturalism is only a euphemism for anti-naturalism.

CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 273

new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that morality can clo
nothing without means of grace, has a valid meaning if, in
place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute
natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without
Nature; it must ally itself with the simplest natural means.
The profoundest secrets lie in common every- day things, such
as supranaturalistic religion and speculation ignore, thus
sacrificing real mysteries to imaginary, illusory ones; as
here, for example, the real power of water is sacrificed to an
imaginary one. Water is the simplest means of grace or healing
for the maladies of the soul as well as of the body. But water
is effectual only where its use is constant and regular. Baptism,
as a single act, is either an altogether useless and unmeaning
institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it, a- superstitious
one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution, if it is under
stood to typify and celebrate the moral and physical curative
virtues of water.

But the sacrament of water required a supplement. Water,
as a universal element of life, reminds us of our origin from
Nature, an origin which we have in common with plants and
animals. In Baptism we bow to the power of a pure Nature-
force ; water is the element of natural equality and freedom,
the mirror of the golden age. But we men are distinguished
from the plants and animals, which together with the inorganic
kingdom we comprehend under the common name of Nature ;
we are distinguished from Nature. Hence we must celebrate
our distinction, our specific difference. The symbols of this
our difference are bread and wine. Bread and wine are, as to
their materials, products of Nature ; as to their form, products
of man. If in water we declare : man can do nothing without
Nature ; by bread and wine we declare : Nature needs man, as
man needs Nature. In water, human, mental activity is nulli
fied ; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. Bread and
wine are supernatural products, in the only valid and true
sense, the sense which is not in contradiction with reason and
Nature. If in water we adore the pure force of Nature, in bread
and wine we adore the supernatural power of mind, of con
sciousness, of man. Hence this sacrament is only for man
matured into consciousness ; while baptism is imparted to in
fants. But we at the same time celebrate here the true relation of
mind to Nature : Nature gives the material, mind gives the form.
The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness

N 3

274 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.

towards Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thank
fulness towards man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth
that Man is the true God and Saviour of man.

Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper;
eating and drinking is in fact in itself a religious act ; at
least, ought to he so.* Think, therefore, with every morsel of
bread which relieves thee from the pain of hunger, with every
draught of wine which cheers thy heart, of the God, who con
fers these beneficent gifts upon thee, think of Man ! But in
thy gratitude towards man forget not gratitude towards holy
Nature ! Forget not that wine is the blood of plants, and flour
the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed for thy well-being ! For
get not that the plant typifies to thee the essence of Nature,
which lovingly surrenders itself for thy enjoyment! Therefore
forget not the gratitude which thou owest to the natural quali
ties of bread and wine ! And if thou art inclined to smile that
I call eating and drinking religious acts, because they are com
mon every-day acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes
without thought, without emotion ; reflect, that the Lord's Sup
per is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it
takes place often ; and, for the sake of comprehending the reli
gious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a posi
tion where the daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted.
Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also the
mental and moral powers of man; they rob him of his
humanity of understanding, of consciousness. Oh ! if thou
shouldst ever experience such want, how wouldst thou bless
and praise the natural qualities of bread and wine, which
restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect ! It needs only that
the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order to vindi
cate to common things an uncommon significance, to life, as
such, a religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us,
let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred ! Amen.

* " Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing
better : yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drinking,
as it is commonly said: Before eating no dancing, and, On a full stomach
stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking is a pleasant necessary
work ; that is a doctrine soon learned and made popular. The same pleasant
necessary work takes our blessed Lord Christ and says : " I have prepared
a joyful, sweet and pleasant meal, I will lay on you no hard heavy work . .
I institute a supper," &c. Luther (xvi. 222).

APPENDIX.

EXPLANATIONS REMARKS ILLUSTRATIVE CITATIONS.

1-

Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as
an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No indi
vidual is an adequate representation of his species, but only the
human individual is conscious of the distinction between the species
and the individual ; in the sense of this distinction lies the root of
religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is
nothing else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature,
the yearning to be free from himself, i. e., from the limits and
defects of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating,
the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognizance of
nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity ;
but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the
form of an individual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the
nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, the pupil in
the form of his tutor. But all feelings which man experiences
towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which
man has towards man, are of a religious nature.* Man feels
nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man.
Homo homini deus est. Want teaches prayer; but in misfortune,
in sorrow, man kneels to entreat help of man also. Feeling makes
God a man, but for the same reason it makes man a God. How
often in deep emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man
exclaims to man: Thou art, thou hast been my redeemer, my
saviour, my protecting spirit, my God ! We feel awe, reverence,
humility, devout admiration, in thinking of a truly great, noble
man; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink into nothing, even in
the presence of human greatness. The purely, truly human emo
tions are religious ; but for that reason the religious emotions are
purely human : the only difference is, that the religious emotions

* ' ' Manifestum igitur est tantum religionis sanguini et affinitati, quantum ipsis
Diis immortalibus tributum : quia inter ista tarn sancta vincula non magis, quam
in aliquoloco sacrato nudare se, nefas esse credebatur." Valer. Max. (1. ii. c. i.).

276 APPENDIX.

are vague, indefinite; but even this is only the case when the
object of them is indefinite. Where God is positively defined, is
the object of positive religion, there God is also the object of
positive, definite human feelings, the object of fear and love, and
therefore he is a positively human being ; for there is nothing more
in God than what lies in feeling. If in the heart there is fear and
terror, in God there is anger; if in the heart there is joy, hope,
confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in
anger; joy in love, in mercy. "As it is with me in my heart, so
is it with God." "As my heart is, so is God." Luther (T. i.
p. 72). But a merciful and angry God Deus vere irascitur
(Melancthon) is a God no longer distinguishable from the human
feelings and nature. Thus even in religion man bows before the
nature of man under the form of a personal human being ; religion
itself expressly declares and all anthropomorphisms declare this
in opposition to pantheism, quod supra nos nihil ad nos ; that is,
a God who inspires us with 110 human emotions, who does not
reflect our own emotions, in a word, who is not a man, such a
God is nothing to us, has no interest for us, does not concern us.
(See the passages cited in this work from Luther.)

Religion has thus no dispositions and emotions which are peculiar
to itself; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are
simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences
either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or
to his fellow-man, or to Nature. You must not fear men, but
God; you must not love man, i. e., not truly, for his own sake,
but God ; you must not humble yourselves before human greatness,
but only before the Lord ; not believe and confide in man, but only
in God. Hence comes the danger of worshipping false gods in dis
tinction from the true God. Hence the "jealousy" of God. " Ego
Jehova, Deus tuus, Deus sum zelotypus. Ut zelotypns vir dicitur,
qui rivalem pati nequit : sic Deus socium in cultu, quern ab homini-
bus postulat, ferre non potest." (Clericus, Comment, in Exod. c. 20,
v. 5.) Jealousy arises because a being preferred and loved by
me directs to another the feelings and dispositions which I claim
for myself. But how could I be jealous if the impressions and
emotions which I excite in the beloved being were altogether
peculiar and apart, were essentially different from the impressions
which another can make on him] If, therefore, the emotions of
religion were objectively, essentially different from those which lie
out of religion, there would be no possibility of idolatry in man,
or of jealousy in God. As the flute has another sound to me than
the trumpet, and I cannot confound the impressions produced by
the former with the impressions produced by the latter; so I could
not transfer to a natural or human being the emotions of religion,

APPENDIX. 277

if the object of religion, God, were specifically different from the
natural or human being, and consequently the impressions which
he produced on me were specific, peculiar.

2.

Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sympathy;
feeling arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man
has in isolation ; feelings only in community. Only in sympathy
does sensation rise into feeling. Feeling is aesthetic, human sensa
tion; only what is human, is the object of feeling. In feeling
man is related to his fellow man as to himself; he is alive to the
sorrows, the joys of another as his own. Thus only by commu
nication does man rise above merely egoistic sensation into feel
ing; participated sensation is feeling. He who has no need of
participating has no feeling. But what does the hand, the kiss,
the glance, the voice, the tone, the word as the expression of
emotion impart 1 ? Emotion. The very same thing which, pro
nounced or performed without the appropriate tone, without
emotion, is only an object of indifferent perception, becomes,
when uttered or performed with emotion, an object of feeling.
To feel is to have a sense of sensations, to have emotion in the
perception of emotion. Hence the brutes rise to feeling only in
the sexual relation, and therefore only transiently; for here the
being experiences sensation not in. relation to itself taken alone,
or to an object without sensation, but to a being having like
emotions with itself, not to another as a distinct object, but to an
object which in species is identical. Hence Nature is an object of
feeling to me only when I regard it as a being akin to me, and in
sympathy with me.

It is clear from what has been said, that only where in truth, if
not according to the subjective conception, the distinction between
the divine and human being is abolished, is the objective existence
of God, the existence of God as an objective, distinct being, abo
lished : only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling,
or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge
of theology therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the under
standing; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality
which imposes itself on the understanding ; hence he is transferred
to feeling; in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And
doubtless this is the safest refuge ; for to make feeling the essence of
religion is nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God And
as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist ; and as cer
tainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist. The
certainty of God is here nothing else than the self-certainty of

278 APPENDIX.

human feeling, the yearning after God is the yearning after un
limited, uninterrupted, pure feeling. In life the feelings are
interrupted ; they collapse ; they are followed by a state of void,
of insensibility. The religious problem, therefore, is to give fixity
to feeling in spite of the vicissitudes of life, and to separate it from
repugnant disturbances and limitations : God himself is nothing
else than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling, feeling for which there
exists no limits, no opposite. If God were a being distinct from thy
feeling, he would be known to thee in some other way than simply
in feeling; but just because thou perceivest him only by feeling, he
exists only in feeling he is himself only feeling.

3.

God is marts highest feeling of self, freed from all contrarieties, or
disagreeables. God is the highest being ; therefore, to feel God is
the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest
feeling of self? So long as I have not had the feeling of the
highest, so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so
long I do not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is
an object to me in my feeling of the highest being? Nothing else
than the highest nature of my power of feeling. So much as a
man can feel, so much is (his) God. But the highest degree of the
power of feeling is also the highest degree of the feeling of self.
In the feeling of the low I feel myself lowered, in the feeling of the
high I feel myself exalted. The feeling of self and feeling are in
separable, otherwise feeling would not belong to myself. Thus
God, as an object of feeling, or what is the same thing, the feeling
of God, is nothing else than man's highest feeling of self. But
God is the freest, or rather the absolutely, only free being; thus
God is man's highest feeling of freedom. How couldst thou be
conscious of the highest being as freedom, or freedom as the highest
being, if thou didst not feel thyself free? But when dost thou
feel thyself free? When thou feelest God. To feel God is to feel
oneself free. For example, thou feelest desire, passion, the con
ditions of time and place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit
thou strugglest against, thou breakest loose from, thou deniest.
The consciousness of a limit, as such, is already an anathema, a
sentence of condemnation pronounced on this limit, for it is an
oppressive, disagreeable, negative consciousness. Only the feeling
of the good, of the positive, is itself good and positive is joy. Joy
alone is feeling in its element, its paradise, because it is unrestricted
activity. The sense of pain in an organ is nothing else than the
sense of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted activity ; in a word, the

APPENDIX. 279

sense of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence thou strivest to
escape from the sense of limitation into unlimited feeling. By
means of the will, or the imagination, thou negativest limits, and
thus obtainest the feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is God.
God is exalted above desire and passion, above the limits of space
and time. But this exaltation is thy own exaltation above that
which appears to thee as a limit. Does not this exaltation of the
divine being exalt thee? How could it do so, if it were external
to thee? No; God is an exalted being only for him who himself
has exalted thoughts and feelings. Hence the exaltation of the
divine being varies according to that which different men, or
nations, perceive as a limitation to the feeling of self, and which
they consequently negative, or eliminate from their ideal.

4.

The distinction between the "heathen," or philosophic, and the
Christian God the non-human, or pantheistic, and tJie human,
personal God reduces itself only to the distinction between the
understanding or reason, and the heart or feelings. Reason is the
self-consciousness of the species, as such ; feeling is the self-con
sciousness of individuality ; the reason has relation to existences,
as things ; the heart to existences, as persons. / am is an expres
sion of the heart; / think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum? No!
Sentio, ergo sum. Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my
non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the
species ; reason is the annihilation of personality. To think is an
act of spiritual marriage. Only beings of the same species under
stand each other; the impulse to communicate thought is the in
tellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is,
audiatur et alter a pars, because it does not interest itself in man
alone; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all im
partially, but the heart only what is like itself. It is true that
the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only because it sees in
the brute something more than the brute. The heart loves only
what it identifies with itself. It says : Whatsoever thou dost to
this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself; does not
get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing
else than the supernatural heart ; the heart does not give us the
idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. " For the
heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion,
in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It
is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives
itself forth to all ; but it only recognises as existing that which it

280 APPENDIX.

knows to have emotion."* Reason, on the contrary, has pity on
animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them with
man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man, not
existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights of
their own. The heart sacrifices the species to the individual, the
reason sacrifices the individual to the species. The man without
feeling has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, is the
domestic life ; the reason is the res publica of man. Reason is the
truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak
popularly, reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man ;
a distinction however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others,
only admissible in antithesis. Everything which man wishes, but
which reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immor
tality, freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart.
The heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immor
tality. Satisfy yourselves with this existence! You do not
understand your heart ; therein lies the evil. You desire a real,
external, objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here
is the source of delusion.

But as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential
limits of Nature ; reason, on the other hand, releases Nature from
the limits of external finiteness. It is true that Nature is the light
and measure of reason; a truth which is opposed to abstract
Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically true ; what has
no basis in Nature has no basis at all. That which is not a physical
law is not a metaphysical law. Every true law in metaphysics can
and must be verified physically. But at the same time reason is
also the light of Nature ; and this truth is the barrier against crude
materialism. Reason is the nature of things come fully to itself,
re-established in its entireness. Reason divests things of the dis
guises and transformations which they have undergone in the conflict
and agitation of the external world, and reduces them to their true
character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals to give an obvious
illustration appear in nature under a form altogether different
from their fundamental one ; nay, many crystals never have ap
peared in their fundamental form. Nevertheless, the mineralogical
reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence nothing is
more foolish than to place Nature in opposition to reason, as an
essence in itself incomprehensible to reason. If reason reduces
transformations and disguises to their fundamental forms, does it
not effect that which lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which,
prior to the operation of reason, could not be effected on account
of external hinderances? What else then does reason do than re-

* See the author's "Leibnitz. 1

APPENDIX. 281

move external disturbances, influences, and obstructions, so as to
present a thing as it ought to be, to make the existence correspond
to the idea; for the fundamental form is the idea of the crystal.
Another popular example. Granite consists of mica, quartz, and
feldspar. But frequently other kinds of stone are mingled with it.
If we had no other guide and tutor than the senses, we should
without hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite all the
kinds of stone which we ever find in combination with it; we
should say yes to everything the senses told us, and so never come
to the true idea of granite. But reason says to the credulous
senses : Quod non. It discriminates ; it distinguishes the essential
from the accidental elements. Reason is the midwife of Nature ; it
explains, enlightens, rectifies and completes Nature. Now that
which separates the essential from the non-essential, the neces
sary from the accidental, what is proper to a thing from what
is foreign, which restores what has been violently sundered to
unity, and what has been forcibly united to freedom, is not this
divine 1 Is not such an agency as this the agency of the highest,
of divine love ? And how would it be possible that reason should
exhibit the pure nature of things, the original text of the universe,
if it were not itself the purest, most original essence ? But reason
has no partiality for this or that species of things. It embraces
with equal interest the whole universe ; it interests itself in all
things and beings without distinction, without exception; it be
stows the same attention on the worm which human egoism
tramples under its feet, as on man, as on the sun in the firmament.
Reason is thus the all-embracing, all-compassionating being, the
love of the universe to itself. To reason alone belongs the great
work of the resurrection and restoration of all things and beings
universal redemption and reconciliation. Not even the unreason
ing animal, the speechless plant, the unsentient stone, shall be
excluded from this universal festival. But how would it be possible
that reason should interest itself in all beings without exception, if
reason were not itself universal and unlimited in its nature 1 Is a
limited nature compatible with unlimited interest, or an unlimited
interest with a limited nature? By what dost thou recognise the
limitation of a being but by the limitation of his interest ? As far
as the interest extends, so far extends the nature. The desire of
knowledge is infinite ; reason then is infinite. Reason is the highest
species of being; hence it includes all species in the sphere of
knowledge. Reason cannot content itself in the individual ; it has
its adequate existence only when it has the species for its object,
and the species not as it has already developed itself in the past and
present, but as it will develop itself in the unknown future. In the
activity of reason I feel a distinction between myself and reason in

282 APPENDIX.

me; this distinction is the limit of the individuality; in feeling I
am conscious of no distinction between myself and feeling; and
with this absence of distinction there is an absence also of the sense
of limitation. Hence it arises that to so many men reason appears
finite, and only feeling infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart of
man as a rational being, is as infinite, as universal as reason ; since
man only truly perceives and understands that for which he has
feeling.

Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from
non-essential limits, in their identity ; it is the universal being, the
universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the
reason, is the private God of man ; the personal God is the heart
of man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.*

5.

Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The
Christian thinks only of himself, and the salvation of his soul. "A te
incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nee frustra in alia distendaris,
te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. De inter. Domo.
(Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) Si te vigilanter
homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquam intendas. Divus

Bernardus. (Tract, de XII grad. humil. et sup.) Orbe sit sol

major, an pedis unius latitudine metiatur? alieno ex lumine an
propriis luceat fulgoribus luna? quae neque scire compendium, neque

ignorare detrimentum est ullum Res vestra in ancipiti sita est:

solus dico animarum vestrarum. Arnobius (adv. gentes, 1. ii. c. 61).
Quaero igitur ad quani rem scientia referenda sit; si ad causas
rerum naturalium, quae beatitudo erit mihi proposita, si sciero unde
Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici delirant? Lactantius.

(Instit. div. 1. iii. c. 8.) Etiam curiosi esse prohibemur Sunt

enim qui desertis virtutibus et nescientes quid sit Deus.... magnum
aliquid se agere putant, si universam ista/m corporis molem, quam
munduin nuncupamus, curiosissime intentissimeque perquirant. . . .
Heprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate,
si se castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore plerumque
decipitur, ut (aut) nihil putet esse nisi corpus. Augustinus (de
Mor. Eccl. cath. 1. i. c. 21). De terrene quoque vel qualitate vel

* [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz, or feeling directed
towards real objects, and therefore practically sympathetic ; and Gemuth, or feeling
directed towards imaginary objects, and therefore practically unsympathetic, self-
absorbed. Bnt the verbal distinction is not adhered to in the ordinary use of the
language, or, indeed, by Feuerbach himself; and the psychological distinction is
sufficiently indicated in other parts of the present work. The passage is therefore
omitted, as likely to confuse the reader.

APPENDIX. 283

positione tractare, niliil prosit ad spem futuri, cum satis sit ad
scientiam, quod scripturarum dimnarwm series comprehendit, quod
Deus suspendit terrain in nihilo. Ambrosius (Hexaemeron, 1. i.
c. 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem
ac sine fine victuram, quam quidquid in ea medici scrutando discere
potuerunt. Augustinus (de Anima et ejus orig. 1. iv. c. 10)." "Let

natural science alone It is enough that thou knowest fire is

hot, water cold and moist Know how thou oughtest to treat thy

field, thy cow, thy house and child that is enough of natural
science for thee. Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who will
show thee thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. Thus
wilt thou learn God and thyself, which no natural master or natural
science eVer taught." Luther (T. xiii. p. 264).

Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely,
show clearly enough that true, religious Christianity has within it
no principle of scientific and material culture, no motive to it.
The practical end and object of Christians is solely heaven, i. e., the
realized salvation of the soul. The theoretical end and object of
Christians is solely God, as the being identical with the salvation
of the soul. He who knows God knows all things ; and as God is
infinitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely more than
the knowledge of the world. Theology makes happy, for its object
is personified happiness. Infelix homo, qui scit ilia omnia (created
things) te autein nescit, Beatus autem qui te scit, etiam si ilia nesciat.
Augustin (Confess. 1. v. c. 4). Who then would, who could
exchange the blessed divine being for the unblessed worthless
things of this world? It is true that God reveals himself in
Nature, but only vaguely, dimly, only in his most general attributes ;
himself, his true personal nature, he reveals only in religion, in
Christianity. The knowledge of God through Nature is heathen
ism; the knowledge of God through himself, through Christ, in
whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is Christianity.
What interest, therefore, should Christians have in occupying
themselves with material, natural things 1 Occupation with Nature,
culture in general, presupposes or, at least, infallibly produces, a
heathenish, mundane, anti-theological, anti-supranaturalistic senti
ment and belief. Hence the culture of modern Christian nations
is so little to be derived from Christianity, that it is only to be
explained by the negation of Christianity, a negation which
certainly was, in the first instance, only practical. It is indeed
necessary to distinguish between what the Christians were as
Christians and what they were as heathens, as natural men, and
thus between that which they have said and done in agreement,
and that which they have said and done in contradiction with
their faith. (See on this subject the author's P. Bayle.)

281 APPENDIX

How frivolous, therefore, are modern Christians, when they deck
themselves in the arts and sciences of modern nations as products
of Christianity! How striking is the contrast in this respect
between these modern boasters and the Christians of older times !
The latter knew of no other Christianity than that which is con
tained in the Christian faith, in faith in Christ; they did not
reckon the treasures and riches, the arts and sciences of this world,
as part of Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded
the pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks and Romans.
" Why dost thou not also wonder, Erasmus, that from the beginning
of the world there have always been among the heathens higher,
rarer people, of greater, more exalted understanding, more excellent
diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians or the people
of God ? Christ himself says, that the children of this world are
wiser than the children of light. Yea, who among the Christians
could we compare for understanding or application to Cicero (to
say nothing of the Greeks, Demosthenes and others) 1 ?" Luther
(T. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur nos antecellimus? Num ingenio,
doctrina, morwn moderations illos superamus ? Nequaquam. Sed
vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et celebratione prcestamus. Melanc-
thonis (et al. Declam. T. iii, de vera invocat. Dei).

6.

In religion man Jms in view himself alone, or, in regarding him
self as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an
object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the Incar
nation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery
of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God
suffers suffers for me this is the highest self-enjoyment, the
highest self-certainty of human feeling. " God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son." John iii. 16. " If God be for
us, who can be against us ? He that spared not his own Son, but
gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give
us all things ?" Horn. viii. 31, 32. " God commendeth his love
towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Rom. v. 8. " The life which I now live in the flesh I live by
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me ." Gal. ii. 20. See also, Titus iii. 4; Heb. ii. 11. "Credimus

in unum Deum patrem et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum

filium Dei Deum ex Deo qui propter nos homines et propter

nostram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus."
Fides Nicaenae Synodi. " Servator ex praeexcellenti in homi
nes charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbecillitatem, sed ea
indutus ad commimein venit hominum salutem." Clemens Alex.

APPENDIX. 285

(Stromata, 1. vii. Ed. Wirceb. 1779.) " Christianos autem haec
universa decent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et
propter excellentiarn amoris erga homines incredibilissimum provi-
dentiae opus, dei incarnatio, quae propter nos facta est." Gregorii
Nysseni, (Philosophiae, 1. viii. de provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus.
Jo. Cono interp.) " Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus :
venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo" Divus Ber-
nardus Clarev. (de adventu Domini. Basil. 1552). " Videte, Fratres,

quantum se humiliavit propter homines Deus Unde non se ipse

liomo despiciat, propter quern utique ista subire dignatus est Deus"
Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). " homo propter quern
Deus factus est homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes" (S. 380, c.
2). " Quis de se desperet, pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius
Dei?" Id. (de Agone Chr. c. 11). "Quis potest odire hominem,
cujus naturam et similitudinem videt in humanitate Dei ? Reveraqui
odit ilium, odit Deum" (Manuale, c. 2 6. Among the spurious writings

of Augustine.) " Plus nos amat Deus quam /ilium pater Propter

nos filio non pepercit. Et quid plus addo 1 et hoc filio justo et hoc
filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest? et
hoc pro nobis, i. e. pro malis, etc." Salvianus (de gubernatione Dei.
Kittershusius, 1611. pp. 126, 127). " Quid enim mentes nostras tan-
turn erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti

nos fecit Deus, ut Dei films dignatus nostrum inire consortium

mala nostra moriendo perferret." Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20,
c. 1.) " Attamen si ilia quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non
praecessisset, ad hanc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset." D.
Bernardus (Tract, de XII gradibus hum. et sup). " Ecce omnia tua
sunt, quae habeo et uncle tibi servio. Verum tamen vice versa tu
magis mihi servis, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in
ministerium hominis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quae-
cunque mandasti. Et hoc parum est : quin etiam Angelos in mini
sterium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse
homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei promisisti."
Thomas k Kempis (de Imit. 1. iii. c. 10). "Ego omnipotens et
altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo, me homini propter te humi-

liter subjeci Pepercit tibi oculus rneus, quia pretiosa fuit anima

tua in conspectu meo" (ibid. c. 13). " Fili ego descendi de coelo pro
salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate, sed charitate
trahente" (ibid. c. 18). "Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod
totum pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant, ad salutem generis
humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam ilia tanta hujussalutis

cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus? Itaque Jesus

Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis in hoc mysterio Filii Dei

iv ffapKi fyavepwSevroQ angelis hominibusque patefactam esse
dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae" J. A. Ernesti

286 APPENDIX.

(Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773.
pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the ex
pressions of the ancient faith !) " Propter me Christus suscepit meas
infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e.
pro omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille flevit,
ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam
tuam doleres." Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, 1. ii. c. 4).
" God is not against us men. For if God had been against us and
hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched
human nature on himself. " " How highly our Lord God has
honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man ! How
could he have made himself nearer to us TV- Luther (T. xvi. pp. 533,
574). " It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have
seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the
dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would
rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in
trouble." Id. (T. xiii. p. 170). " It is not thy kingly rule which
draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart ! but thy having become
a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of
weariness." " Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm,
thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never disowns itself."
" The most powerful charm that melts my heart, is, that my Lord
died on the cross for me." "That it is which moves me; I love
thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, be-
camest the Lamb of God for me." " Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb
of God, with thousands of sinners' tears; thou didst die for me on
the cross and didst seek me with yearning." " Thy blood it is which
has made me give myself up to thee ; else I had never thought of
thee through my whole life." " If thou hadst not laid hold upon
me, I should never have gone to seek thee." " O how sweetly the
soul feeds on the passion of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O
thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly
go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks : for me." " The
Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood,
the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach
us." " Ah ! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the
blood-stained robe of the martyr." " My friend is to me and I to
him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat : we look at each other con
tinually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards
his : he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side."
These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesang-
buch der Evangelischen Briidergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see
clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest
mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into the mystery of
human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from

APPENDIX. 287

natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is
true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors
such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut
hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself; it
rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love
of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself. " Causa

diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo diligere Qui

Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus
est, hie vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum.
Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non
sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis
est conversationis, non humanae affectionis" (thus the ideal of love,
which, however, is first realized in heaven). Bernhardus, Tract,
de dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love
is only the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the
subject is merged in the object. As soon as the distinction presents
itself and it necessarily does so so soon does the subject have
reference to itself as the object of God. And even apart from this :
the religious subject denies its ego, its personality, only because it
has the enjoyment of blissful personality in God God per se the
realized salvation of the soul, God the highest self-contentment,
the highest rapture of human feeling. Hence the saying : " Qui
Deum non diligit, seipsum non diligit."

7-

Because God suffers, man must suffer. The Christian religion is
the religion of suffering. " Yidelicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in
theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quern
flevisse legimus, risisse non legimus." Salvianus (1. c. 1. vi. 181).
" Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere,
quorum est aeterna vita." Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Boin.
1. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). " Nemo vitam aeternam, incorrup-
tibilem, immortalemque desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis,

corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat Quid ergo cupimus, nisi ita

non esse ut nunc sumus ? Et quid ingemiscimus, nisi poenitendo,
quia ita sumus ?" Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 35 1, c. 3). " Si
quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset,

Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset Quoniam per

multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei." Thomas
a Kempis (de Imit. 1. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian
religion is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course
applies only to the Christianity of the " mistaken" Christians of old
times. Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the sufferings
of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. It is precisely

288 APPENDIX.

the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation
to this subject, that the latter, out of self-regard, attached itself
only to the merits of Christ, while the former, out of sympathy,
attached itself to his sufferings. " Formerly, in popery, the suffer
ings of the Lord were so preached, that it was only pointed out
how his example should be imitated. After that, the time was
filled up with the sufferings and sorrows of Mary, and the compas
sion with which Christ and his mother were bewailed; and the
only aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people to com
passion and tears, and he who could do this well was held the best
preacher for Passion-week. But we preach the Lord's sufferings

as the Holy Scripture teaches us Christ suffered for the praise

and glory of God but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered

in order to bring redemption and blessedness The cause and

end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised in this he suffered for
us. This honour is to be given to no other suffering." Luther (T.
xvi. p. 182). "Lamb! I weep only for joy over thy suffering;
the suffering was thine, but thy merit is mine !" " I know of no
joys but those which come from thy sufferings." " It remains ever
in my mind that it cost thee thy blood to redeem me." " O my
Immanuel ! how sweet is it to my soul when thou permittest me to
enjoy the outpouring of thy blood." "Sinners are glad at heart

that they have a Saviour it is wondrously beautiful to them to

see Jesus on the Cross" (Moravian hymn-book). It is therefore
not to be wondered at, if Christians of the present day decline to
know anything more of the sufferings of Christ. It is they, for
sooth, who have first made out what true Christianity is they rely
solely on the divine word of the Holy Scriptures. And the Bible,
as every one knows, has the valuable quality, that everything may
be found in it which it is desired to find. What once stood there,
of course now stands there no longer. The principle of stability
has long vanished from the Bible. Divine revelation is as changing
as human opinion. Tempora mutantur.

8.

The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social
life the mystery of I and thou. " Unurn Deum esse confitemur.
Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitarium, nee eundem, qui ipse sibi
pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem verum, qui genuit filium verum,

i. e. Deum ex Deo non creatum, sed genitum" Concil. Chalced.

(Carranza Summa 1559. p. 139). "Si quis quod scriptum est:
Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad
semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit." Concil. Syrmiense
(ibid. p. 68). " Jubet autem his verbis : Faciamus hominem, prodeat

APPENDIX. 289

herba. Ex quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo
sermones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei
adfuisse, cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscebat." Athana-
sius (Contra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627. T. i. p. 51).
" Professio enim consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod
consortium aliquid iiec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum

solitudo solitarii recipit: faciamus Non solitario conveiiit

dicere : faciamus et nostrarn." Petrus Lomb. (1. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.)
The Protestants explain the passage in the same way. " Quod pro-
fecto aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter i2)sas trinitatis personas quan-
dam de creando homine institutam fuisse consultationem." Buddeus
(Comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. 1. ii. c. i. 45).
" ' Let us make' is the word of a deliberative council. And from
these words it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there
must be more than one person For the little word 'us' indi
cates that he who there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make
the text ridiculous by saying that there is a way of speaking thus,
even where there is only one person." Luther (T. i. p. 19). Not
only consultations, but compacts take place between the chief
persons in the Trinity, precisely as in human society. " Nihil aliud
superest, quam ut consensum quemdam patris ac filii adeoque
quoddam velut pactum (in relation, namely, to the redemption of
men) inde concludamus." Buddeus (Comp. 1. iv. c. i. 4. Note
2). And as the essential bond of the Divine Persons is love, the
Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest bond of love marriage.

"Nunc Filium Dei precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus

est et vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filimn,
sponsi et sponsse pectora conglutinet." Or. de Conjugio (Declam.
Melancth. T. iii. p. 453).

The distinctions in tJie Divine essence oftlie Trinity are, natural,
physical distinctions. " Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus

Et est proprium solius patris, non quod non est natus ipse,

sed quod unumfiliurn yenuerit, propriumque solius filii, non quod
ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia natus est." Hylarius
in 1. iii. de trinitate. "Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hie
filius. Hie enim verus et proprius est filius origine, non adoptione,
veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creatione." Petrus L.
(1. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). "Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur,
profitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus est,

genitoris f rater esse potent? Non enim ex aliquo principio

praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari
queant, sed Pater principium Filii et geriitor est : et Pater Pater
est neque ullius Filius fuit, et Filius J?ilius est et non f rater"
Athanasius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). " Qui
(Deus) cum in rebus quae iiascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate

o

290 APPENDIX.

effecerit, ut suae substantiae prolem quaelibet res gignat, sicut homo
gignit honiinem, non altering naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide
quam impie dicatur ipse non genuisse id quod ipse est" Augustinus
(Ep. 170, 6. Ed. Antw. 1700). " Ut igitur in natura hominuin
filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri : ita
secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est
et ejus est imago." Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Wite-
bergae, 1595. p. 30). "As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood
and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the
Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity."
Luther (T. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roel, a theologian of the school of
Descartes and Coccej us, had advanced this thesis: "Filium Dei,
Secundam. Deitatis personam improprie dici genitam." This was
immediately opposed by his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, who de
clared it an unheard of thesis, and maintained : " Generationem
Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime emmciari." Other theologians
also contended against Koel, and declared : " Generationem in Deo
esse maxime veram et propriam." (Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S.
vii. p. 377 etc.) That in the Bible also the Filius Dei signifies
a real son, is unequivocally implied in this passage : " God so loved
the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." If the love of God,
which this passage insists upon is to be regarded as a truth, then the
Son also must be a truth, and, in plain language, a physical truth.
On this lies the emphasis, that God gave his own Son for us in
this alone the proof of his great love. Hence the Herrnhut hymn-
book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it says of
" the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our Father :"
" His Son is not too dear. No ! he gives him up for me, that he
may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou hast
so loved the world, that thy heart consents to give up the Son, thy
joy and life, to suffering and death."

God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means : God is not
only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical being. The
central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only
through the Son ; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is
the mystery of physical nature. The Son is the^eed of sensuous-
ness, or of the heart, satisfied in God ; for all wishes of the heart,
even the wish for a personal God and for heavenly felicity, are
sensuous wishes; the heart is essentially materialistic, it con
tents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is
especially evident in the conception that the Son, even in the midst
of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, per
manent attribute. Ambrosius : " Scriptum est Ephes. i. : Secundum
carnem igitur omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur." Chrysostomus :

APPENDIX. 291

" Christum secundum carnem pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari."
Theodoretus : " Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a mortuis,

divina glorificata gloria corpus tamen est et habet, quam prius

habuit, circumscriptionem." (See Concordienbuchs-anhang. " Zeug-
nisse der h. Schrift und Altvater von Christo," and Petrus L. 1. iii.
dist. 10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, T. xix. pp. 464-468.)
In accordance with this the United Brethren say : " I will ever em
brace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my lips are pale
in death, I shall see thee bodily." " Thy eyes, thy mouth, the body
wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely, all that I shall behold."

Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the
bridegroom of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. "O
Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt dulces istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria
et desiderio tui excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudium, quod ex
manifesto, tui visione capietur 1 ? Si adeo dulce estflerepro te, quam
dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia
proferimus in publicum? Cur iiieffabiles et innarrabiles affectus
communibus verbis conamur exprimere? Inexperti talia non tn-

telligunt. Zelotypus est sponsus iste Delicatus est sponsus iste."

Scala Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the spurious
writings of St. Bernard). " Luge propter amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi
tui, quosque eum videre possis." (De modo bene vivendi. Sermo
x. id.) " Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens
amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae com-
memorant. Joh. xiv. 3. 1 Joh. iii. 1. 1 Pet. i. 8. 1 Thess. iv. 17.
Ac quis non jucundum credat videre corpus illud, cujus velut in-
strumento usus est films Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem
tandem amicum salutaref Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. 1. ii. P.
ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. 302. Obs. 3). " Quod oculis corporis Christum
visuri simus, dubio caret." J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol.
Dogm. 1. ii. c. iii. 10).

The distinction between God with the Son, or the sensuous
God, and God without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness,
is nothing further than the distinction between the mystical and
the rational man. The rational man lives and thinks; with him
life is the complement of thought, and thought the complement
of life, both theoretically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of
the reality of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practi
cally, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activity of
thought. That which I have in life, I do not need to posit beyond
life, in spirit, in metaphysical existence, in God; love, friendship,
perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not,
cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the
needs of "the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not
be clouded by desires ; in the demarcation of activities consists the

o 2

292 APPENDIX.

wisdom of life and thought ; I do not need a God who supplies by
a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness the absence of
the real. My heart is satisfied, before I enter into intellectual
activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i. e. y free,
in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly
mixes itself with the afiairs of the reason. Thus, I do not think
in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason, which is not
satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest of reason, from
pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of
the pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore, the God of
the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart, which in
thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the
aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of dis
criminating and limiting criticism ; for his mind is always beclouded
by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his
feelings. He never attains to abstract, i. e., disinterested, free
thought, and for that reason he never attains to the perception of
things in their naturalness, truth, and reality.

One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians
said, that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest
by the light of natural reason. But how is it that reason can know
the Divine Being, unless it be because the divine being is nothing
else than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the
Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known
through revelation. Why not through reason 1 Because it con
tradicts reason, i. e., because it does not express a want of the
reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, the proposition
that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it
has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion
have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, tinder definite
relations and conceptions ; for this reason, to the men of a later
time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions, have disappeared,
they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only tradi
tional, i. e , revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason
reduces itself only to the antithesis of history and reason, only to
this, that mankind at a given time is no longer capable of that
which at another time it was quite capable of; just as the individual
man does not unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only
in moments of special appeal from without or incitement from
within. Thus the works of genius arise only under altogether
special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus coincide
more than once; they are aira^, Xeyo^eva. "Einmal ist alles wahre
nur." The true is born but once. Hence a man's own works often
appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible.
He no longer knows how he produced them or could produce them,

APPENDIX. 293

i. e., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less repro
duce them. And just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because
the productions of our youth have become strange and inexplicable
to us in their teiiour and origin, we were to refer them to a special
inspiration from above ; so it is folly, because the doctrines and
ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the reason of a sub
sequent age, to claim for them a supra- and extrahuman, i. e., an
imaginary, illusory origin.

9.

The creation out of nothing expresses the non-divineness, non-
essentiality, i. e., the nothingness of tJie world.

That is created which once did not exist, which some time will
exist no longer, to which, therefore, it is possible not to exist, which
we can think of as not existing, in a word, which has not its
existence in itself, is not necessary. " Cum enim res producantur
ex suo non-esse, possunt ergo absolute non-esse, adeoque implicat,
quod non sunt necessaries." Duns Scotus (ap. Rixner, B. ii. p. 78).
But only necessary existence is existence. If I am not necessary,
do not feel myself necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I
exist or not, that thus my existence is worthless, nothing. " I am
nothing," and " I am not necessary," is fundamentally the same
thing. "Creatio non est motus, sed simplicis divina? voluntatis
vocatio ad esse eorum, quae antea nihil fuerunt et secundum se ipsa
et nihil sunt et ex nihilo sunt" Albertus M. (de mirab. scient.
Dei P. ii. Tr. i. Qu. 4, Art. 5, memb. ii.) But the position that
the world is not necessary, has no other bearing than to prove that
the extra, and supramundaiie being (i. e., in fact, the human being)
is the only necessary, only real being. Since the one is non-
essential and temporal, the other is necessarily the essential,
existent, eternal. The Creation is the proof that God is, that
he is exclusively true and real. " Sanctus Dominus Deus omnipo-
tens in principio, quod est in te, in sapientia tua, quae nata est de
substantia tua, fecisti aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim coelum et
terrain non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc et
tibi, et nullo modo justum esset, ut aequale tibi esset, quod in te non

esset. Et aliud praeter te non erat, unde faceres ea Deus Et

ideo de nihilo fecisti coelum et terrain." Augustinus (Confessionum
1. xii. c. 7). " Vere enim ipse est, quia incommutabilis est. Onrnis

enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat Ei ergo qui summe est,

non potest esse contrarium nisi quod non est. Si solus ipse incom
mutabilis, omnia quae fecit, quia ex nihilo id est ex eo quod omnino
non est fecit, mutabilia sunt." Augustin(de nat.boni adv. Manich.
cc. 1, 19). " Creatura in nullo debet parificari Deo, si autem non
habuisset initium durationis et esse, in hoc parijicaretur Deo."

294 APPENDIX.

(Albertus M. 1. c. Quaest. incidens 1). The positive, the essential
in the world is not that which makes it a world, which distinguishes
it from God this is precisely its finiteness and nothingness but
rather that in it which is not itself, which is God. "All creatures

are a pure nothing they have no essential existence, for their

existence hangs on the presence of God. If God turned himself
away a moment, they would fall to nothing." (Predigten vor. u.
zu. Tauleri Zeiten, ed. c. p. 29. See also Augustine, e. g. Confess.
1. vii. c. 11). This is quite correctly said from the stand-point of
religion, for God is the principle of existence, the being of the
world, though he is represented as a personal Being distinct from
the world. The world lasts so long as God wills. The world is
transient, but man eternal. " Quamdiu vult, omnia ejus virtute
nianent atque consistunt, et finis eorum in Dei voluntatem recurrit,
et ejus arbitrio resolvuntur." Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. 1. i. c. 5).

" Spiritus enim a Deo creati nunquam esse desinunt Corpora

caelestia tarn diu conservantur, quamdiu Deus ea vult permanere."
Buddeus ( Comp. 1. ii. c. ii. 47). " The dear God does not
alone create, but what he creates he keeps with his own being,
until he wills that it shall be no longer. For the time will come
when the sun, moon, and stars shall be no more." Luther (T. ix.
s. 418). "The end will come sooner than we think." Id. (T. xi.
s. 536). By means of the creation out of nothing man gives
himself the certainty, that the world is nothing, is powerless against
man. " We have a Lord who is greater than the whole world ; we
have a Lord so powerful, that when he only speaks all things are
born../. ..Wherefore should we fear, since he is favourable to us 1 ?"
Id. (T. vi. p. 293). Identical with the belief in the creation
out of nothing is the belief in the eternal life of man, in the victory
over death, the last constraint which nature imposes on man in
the resurrection of the dead. " Six thousand years ago the world

was nothing; and who has made the world? The same God

and Creator can also awake thee from the dead ; he will do it, and
can do it." Id. (T. xi. p. 426. See also 421, &c.) "We
Christians are greater and more than all creatures, not in or by
ourselves, but through the gift of God in Christ, against whom the
world is nothing, and can do nothing." Id. (T. xi. p. 377).

10.

The Creation in the Israelitish religion has only a particular,
egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish religion is the religion of
the most narrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scat
tered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered
with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith of their forefathers.

APPENDIX. 295

" Every Israelitish soul by itself is, in the eyes of the blessed God,
dearer and more precious than all the souls of a whole nation
besides." " The Israelites are among the nations what the heart is
among the members." " The end in the creation of the world was
Israel alone. The world was created for the sake of the Israelites;
they are the fruit, other nations are their husks." " All the
heathens are nothing for him (God); but for the Israelites God has

a use They adore and bless the name of the holy and blessed

God every day, therefore they are numbered every hour, and made
as (numerous as) the grains of corn." " If the Israelites were not,
there would fall no rain on the world, and the sun would not rise
but for their sakes." " He (God) is our kinsman, and we are his

kindred No power or angel is akin to us, for the Lord's portion

is his people" (Deut. xxxii. 9). " He who rises up against an
Israelite (to injure him), does the same thing as if he rose up
against God." " If any one smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is
the same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty." Eisen-
mengers (Entdecktes Judeiithum, T. i. Kap. 14). The Christians
blamed the Jews for this arrogance, but only because the kingdom
of God was taken from them and transferred to the Christians.
Accordingly, we find the same thoughts and sentiments in the
Christians as in the Israelites. " Know that God so takes thee
unto himself that thy enemies are his enemies." Luther (T. vi.
p. 99). "It is the Christians for whose sake God spares the whole

world The Father makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the

good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Yet this
happens only for the sake of the pious and thankful." (T. xvi.
p. 506.) " He who despises me, despises God." (T. xi. p. 538.)
" God suffers, and is despised and persecuted, in us." (T. iv. p. 577.)
Such declarations as these are, I should think, argumenta ad hominem
for the identity of God and man,

11.

The. idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of man's dis
tinction from the brutes, from Nature in general. "Doth God take
care for oxen?" (1 Cor. ix. 9.) "Nunquid curae est Deo bobus?
inquit Paulus. Ad nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos,
qui in usum nostrum sunt conditi" J . L. Yivis Yal. (de Yeritate Fidei
chr. Bas. 1544, p. 108). " Providentia Dei in omnibus aliis creaturis
respicit ad hominem tanquam ad metam suam. Multis passeribus vos
pluris estis. Matth. x. 31. Propter peccaturn hominis natura subjects,
est vanitati. Kom. viii. 20." M. Chemnitii (Loci theol. Francof.
1 608, P. i. p. 312). " Nunquid enim cura est Deo de bobus 1 ? Et sicut
non est cura Deo de bobus, ita nee de aliis irrationalibus. Dicit tamen,

296 APPENDIX.

scriptura (Sapient, vi.) quia ipsi cura est de omnibus. Providentiam

ergo et curam universaliter de cunctis, quae condidit, habet Sed

specialem providentiam atque curam liabet de ratioiialibus." Petrus
L. (1. i. dist. 39, c. 3). Here we have again an example how Chris
tian sophistry is a product of Christian faith, especially of faith in
the Bible as the word of God. First we read that God cares not
for oxen; then that God cares for everything, and therefore
for oxen. That is a contradiction; but the word of God must not
contradict itself. How does faith escape from this contradiction?
By distinguishing between a general and a special providence. But
general providence is illusory, is in truth no providence. Only
special providence is providence in the sense of religion.

General providence the providence which extends itself equally
to irrational and rational beings, which makes no distinction be
tween man and the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air, is
nothing else than the idea of Nature an idea which man may
have without religion. The religious consciousness admits this
when it says : he who denies providence abolishes religion, places
man on a level with the brutes; thus declaring that the provi
dence in which the brutes have a share is in truth no providence.
Providence partakes of the character of its object; hence the pro
vidence which has plants and animals for its object is in accordance
with the qualities and relations of plants and animals. Providence
is nothing else than the inward nature of a thing ; this inward
nature is its genius, its guardian spirit the necessity of its exist
ence. The higher, the more precious a being is, the more ground
of existence it has, the more necessary it is, the less is it open to
annihilation. Every being is necessary only through that by which
it is distinguished from other beings ; its specific difference is the
ground of its existence. So man is necessary only through that by
which he is distinguished from the brutes; hence providence is
nothing else than man's consciousness of the necessity of his exist
ence, of the distinction between his nature and that of other beings;
consequently, that alone is the true providence in which this specific
difference of man becomes an object to him. But this providence
is special, i. e., the providence of love, for only love interests itself
in what is special to a being. Providence without love is a con
ception without basis, without reality. The truth of providence is
love. God loves men, not brutes, not plants; for only for man's
sake does he perform extraordinary deeds, deeds of love miracles.
Where there is no community, there is no love. But what bond
can be supposed to unite brutes, or natural things in general, with
God? God does not recognise himself in them; for they do not
recognise him; where I find nothing of myself, how can I love?
" God who thus promises, does not speak with asses and oxen, as

APPENDIX. 297

Paul says : Doth God take care for oxen 1 but with rational crea
tures made in his likeness, that they may live for ever with him."
Luther (T. ii. s. 156.) God is first with himself in man; in man
first begins religion, providence; for the latter is not something
different from the former, on the contrary, religion is itself the
providence of man. He who loses religion, i. e., faith in himself,
faith in man, in the infinite significance of his being, in the neces
sity of his existence, loses providence. He alone is forsaken who
forsakes himself; he alone is lost, who despairs ; he alone is without
God who is without faith, i. e., without courage. Wherein does
religion place the true proof of providence? in the phenomena of
Nature, as they are objects to us out of religion, in astronomy, in
physics, in natural history 1 ? No ! In those appearances which are
objects of religion, of faith only, which express only the faith of
religion in itself, i. e., in the truth and reality of man, in the reli
gious events, means, and institutions which God has ordained exclu
sively for the salvation of man, in a word, in miracles ; for the means
of grace, the sacraments, belong to the class of providential miracles.
" Quamquam autem haecconsideratiouniversae naturae nos admonet

de Deo tamen nos referamus initio mentem et oculos ad omnia

testimonies, in quibus se Deus ecclesiae patefecit ad eductionem ex
Aegypto, ad vocem sonantem in Sinai, ad Christum resuscitantem

nwrtuos et resuscitatum, etc Ideo semper defixae sint mentes in

Jwrum testimoniorum cogitationem et his confirmatae articulum de
Creatione meditentur, deinde consider ent etiam vestigia Dei impressae
naturae." Melancthon (Loci de Great, p. 62, ed. cit.). "Mirentur
alii creationem, mihi magis libet mirari redemptionem. Mirabile est,
quod caro nostra et ossa nostra a Deo nobis sunt formata, mirabilius
adhuc est, quod ipse Deus caro de carne nostra et os de ossibus
nostris fieri voluit." J. Gerhard (Med. s. M. 15). " The heathens
know God no further than that he is a Creator." Luther (T. ii.
p. 327). That providence has only man for its essential object,
is evident from this, that to religious faith all things and
beings are created for the sake of man. " We are lords not only of
birds, but of all living creatures, and all things are given for our
service, and are created only for our sake." Luther (T. ix. p. 281).
But if things are created only for the sake of man, they are also
preserved only for the sake of man. And if things are mere instru
ments of man, they stand under the protection of no law, they are,
in relation to man, without rights. This outlawing of things explains
miracle.

The negation of providence is the negation of God. " Qui ergo pro-
videntiam tollit, totam Dei substantiam tollit et quid dicit nisi

Deum non esse 1 Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat

omiiis causa pietatis, cum sit spes nulla salutis" Joa. Tritheinius

o 3

298 APPENDIX.

(Tract, de Provicl. Dei). " Nam qui niliil aspici a Deo amrmant
prope est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam substantiam tollant.'
Salvianus (1. c. 1. iv.). "Aristotle almost falls into the opinion that
God though he does not expressly name Him a fool is such a one
that he knows nothing of our affairs, nothing of our designs, under
stands, sees, regards nothing but himself. But what is such a

God or Lord to us ? of what use is he to us?" Luther (in Walch's
Philos. Lexikon, art. Vorsehung). Providence is therefore the
most undeniable, striking proof, that in religion, in the nature of
God himself, man is occupied only with himself, that the mystery of
theology is anthropology, that the substance, the content of the in
finite being, is the "finite" being. "God sees men," means: in God
man sees only himself; " God cares for man," means : a God who is
not active is no real God. But there is no activity without an
object : it is the object which first converts activity from a mere
power into real activity. This object is man. If man did not exist,
God would have no cause for activity. Thus man is the motive
principle, the soul of God. A God who does not see and hear man,
who has not man in himself, is blind and deaf, i. e., inert, empty,
unsubstantial. Thus the fulness of the divine nature is the fulness
of the human ; thus the Godliead of God is humanity. I for my
self, is the comfortless mystery of epicureanism, stoicism, pantheism ;
God for me, this is the consolatory mystery of religion, of Christi
anity. Is man for God's sake, or God for man's? It is true that
in religion man exists for God's sake, but only because God exists
for man's sake. I am for God, because God is for me.

Providence is identical with miraculous power, supernaturalistic
freedom from Nature, tJie dominion of arbitrariness over law.
"Etsi (sc. Deus) sustentat naturam, tamen contra ordinem jussit

aliquando Solem regredi etc Ut igitur invocatio vere fieri

possit, cogitemus Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici fingunt,
alligatum secundis causis, sed sustentantem naturam et multa suo

liberrimo consilio moderantem Multa facit prima causa praeter

secundas, quia est agens liberum." Melancthon (Loci de Causa
Peccati, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) "Scriptura vero tradit, Deum
in actione providentiae esse agens liberum, qui ut plurimum
quidem ordinem sui operis servet, illi tamen ordini non sit alligatus,
sed 1) quicquid facit per causas secundas, illud possit etiam sine
illis per se solum facere 2) quod ex causis secundis possit alium
effectum producere, quarn ipsarum dispositio et natura ferat 3) quod
positis causis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum possit impedire,

mutare, mitigare, exasperare Non igitur est connexio causa-

rum Stoica in actionibus providentiae Dei." M. Chemnitius (1. c. pp.
316, 317). " Liberrime Deus imperat naturae Naturam saluti
hominuin attemperat propter Ecclesiam Omnino tribuendus

APPENDIX. 299

est Deo hie honos, quod possit et velit opitulari nobis, etiam cum a
tota natura destituiniur, contra seriem omnium secundarum causa-

rum Et multa accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi

eventus fateri eos cogunt, se a Deo sinecausis secundis servatosesse."
C. Peucerus (de Praecip. Divinat. gen. Servestae, 1591, p. 44). " Ille
tamen qui omnium est conditor, nullis instruments indiget. Nam.
si id continue fit, quicquid ipse vult, velle illius erit author atque
instrumentum ; nee magis ad haec regenda astris indiget, quam cum
luto aperuit oculos coeci, sicut refert historia Evangelica. Lutnm
enim magis videbatur obturaturum oculos, quam apertururn. Sed
ipse ostendere nobis voluit omnem naturam esse sibi instrumentum
ad quidvis, quantumcunque alienum" J. L. Vives (1. c. 102).
" How is this to be reconciled ? The air gives food and nourishment,
and here stones or rocks flow with water; it is a marvellous gift.
And it is also strange and marvellous that corn grows out of the
earth. Who has this art and this power 1 God has it, who can do
such unnatural things, that we may thence imagine what sort of a
God he is and what sort of power he has, that we may not be
terrified at him nor despair, but firmly believe and trust him, that
he can make the leather in the pocket into gold, and can make dust
into corn on the earth, and the air a cellar for me full of wine.
He is to be trusted, as having such great power, and we may know
that we have a God who can perform these deeds of skill, and that
around him it rains and snows with miraculous works." Luther
(T. iii. p. 594).

The omnipotence of Providence is the omnipotence of human feel
ing releasing itself from all conditions and laws of Nature. This
omnipotence is realized by prayer. Prayer is Almighty. " The

prayer of faith shall save the sick The effectual fervent prayer

of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like
passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain ;
and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six
months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the
earth brought forth her fruit." James v. 15 18. "If ye have
faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the
fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou re
moved and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done, and all things
whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."
Matt. xxi. 21, 22. That under this mountain which the power of
faith is to overcome are to be understood not only very difficult
things res difficillimae, as the exegetists say, who explain this
passage as a proverbial, hyperbolical mode of speech among the
Jews, but rather things which according to Nature and reason are
impossible, is proved by the case of the instantaneously withered
fig-tree, to which the passage in question refers. Here indubitably

300 APPENDIX.

is declared the omnipotence of prayer, of faith, before which the
power of Nature vanishes into nothing. " Mutantur quoque adpreces
ea quae ex naturae causis erant sequutura, quemadmodum. in
Ezechia contigit, rege Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum progressus
mortem minabantur, dictum est a propheta Dei : Morieris et non
rives; sedisdecursus naturae ad regispreces mutatus est et mutaturum
se Deus praeviderat." J. L. Vives (1. c. p. 132). " Saepe fatorum
saevitiam leiiit Deus, placatus piorum votis." Melancthon (Epist.
Sim. Grynaeo). " Cedit natura rerum ftrecibus Moysi, Eliae, Elisaei,
Jesaiae et omnium piorum, sicut Christus inquit Matt. 2 1 : Omnia
quae petetis, credentes accipietis." Id. (Loci de Great, p. 64, ed. cit.)
Celsus calls on the Christians to aid the Emperor and not to de
cline military service. Whereupon Origen answers : " Precibus
nostris profligantes omnes bellorum excitatores daemonas et pertur-
batores pacis ac foederum plus conferimus regibus, quam qui arma
gestant pro Republica." Origenes (adv. Celsum. S. Glenio int. 1.
viii.) Human need is the necessity of the Divine Will. In
prayer man is the active, the determining, God the passive, the
determined. God does the will of man. " God does the will of

those that fear him, and he gives his will up to ours Eor the

text says clearly enough, that Lot was not to stay in all the plain,
but to escape to the mountain. But this his wish God changes,
because Lot fears him and prays to him." "And we have other
testimonies in the Scriptures, which prove that God allows himself
to be turned and subjects his will to our wish." " Thus it was
according to the regular order of God's power, that the sun should
maintain its revolution and wonted course ; but when Joshua in
his need called on the Lord and commanded the sun, that it should
stand still, it stood still at Joshua's word. How great a miracle
this was, ask the astronomers." Luther (T. ii. p. 226). " Lord, I
am here and there in great need and danger of body and soul, and
therefore want thy help and comfort. Item : I must have this and
that ; therefore I entreat thee that thou give it me." " He who so
prays and perseveres unabashed, does right, and our Lord God is
well pleased with him, for He is not so squeamish as we men."
Id. (T. xvi. p. 150).

12.

Faith is the freedom and blessedness which feeling finds in it
self. Feeling objective to itself and active in this freedom, the
reaction of feeling against Nature, is the arbitrariness of the
imagination. The objects of faith t/ierefore necessarily contradict
Nature, necessarily contradict Reason, as that which represents the
nature of things. " Quid magis contra fidem, quam credere nolle,
quidquid non possit ratione attingere? Nam illam quae in

APPENDIX. 301

Deum est fides, beatus papa Gregorius negat plane habere meritum, si
ei humana ratio praebeat experinientum." Bernardus (contr. Abe-
lard. Ep. ad DOHI. Papam Innocentium). " Partus virginis nee ratione
colligitur, nee exemplo monstratur. Quodsi ratione colligitur, non
erit mirabile" Cone. Toletaii. XI. Art. IY. (Summa. Carranza.)
" Quid autem incredibile, si contra usum originis naturalis peperit
Maria et virgo permanet : quando contra usum naturae mare vidit
et fugit atque in fontem suum Jordanis fluenta remearunt? Non
ergo excedit fidem, quod virgo peperit, quando legimus, quod petra
vomuit aquas et in montis speciem maris unda solidata est. Non
ergo excedit fidern, quod homo exivit de virgine, quando petra pro-
fluit, scaturivit ferrum supra aquas, ambulavit homo supra aquas."
Ambrosius (Epist. L. x. Ep. 81. Edit. Basil. Amerbach. 1492 et

1516). " Mira sunt fratres, quae de isto sacramento dicuntur

Haec sunt quae fidem necessario exigunt, rationem omnino non
admittunt." Bernardus (de Coena Dom.). " Quid ergo hie quaeris
naturae ordinem in Christ! corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse
partus ex virgine." Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 10, c. 2). " Laus
fidei est credere quod est supra rationem, ubi homo abnegat intel-
lectum et omnes sensus" (Addit. Henrici de Vurimaria. Ibid,
dist. 12, c. 5.) "All the articles of our faith appear foolish and

ridiculous to reason." We Christians seem fools to the world

for believing that Mary was the true mother of this child, and was
nevertheless a pure virgin. For this is not only against all reason,
but also against the creation of God, who said to Adam and Eve,
" Be fruitful and multiply." " We ought not to inquire whether
a thing be possible, but we should say, God has said it, therefore
it will happen, even if it be impossible. For although I cannot
see or understand it, yet the Lord can make the impossible
possible, and out of nothing can make all things." Luther (T. xvi.
pp. 148, 149, 570). "What is more miraculous than that God and
man is one Person 1 that he is the Son of God and the Son of Mary,
and yet only one Son 1 Who will comprehend this mystery in all
eternity, that God is man, that a creature is the Creator, and the
Creator a creature 1" Id. (T. vii. p. 128). The essential object
of faith, therefore, is miracle; but not common, visible miracle,
which is an object even to the bold eye of curiosity and unbelief in
general ; not the appearance, but the essence of miracle ; not the
fact, but the miraculous power, the Being who works miracles, who
attests and reveals himself in miracle. And this miraculous power
is to faith always present; even Protestantism believes in the un
interrupted perpetuation of miraculous power; it only denies the
necessity that it should still manifest itself in special visible signs,
for the furtherance of dogmatic ends. " Some have said that signs
were the revelation of the Spirit in the commencement of Chris-

302 APPENDIX.

tianity and have now ceased. That is not correct ; for there is
even now such a power, and though it is not used, that is of no im
portance. For we have still the power to perform such signs."
"Now, however, that Christianity is spread abroad and made
known to all the world, there is no need to work miracles, as in
the times of the apostles. But if there were need for it, if the
Gospel were oppressed and persecuted, we must truly apply our
selves to this, and must also work miracles." Luther (T. xiii. pp.
642, 648). Miracle is* so essential, so natural to faith, that to it
even natural phenomena are miracles, and not in the physical sense,
but in the theological, supranaturalistic sense. " God, in the be
ginning, said : Let the earth bring forth grass and herbs, &c.
That same word which the Creator spoke brings the cherry out of
the dry bough, and the cherry-tree out of the little kernel. It is
the omnipotence of God which makes young fowls and geese come
out of the eggs. Thus God preaches to us daily of the resurrection
of the dead, and has given us as many examples and experiences of
this article as there are creatures." Luther (T. x. p. 432. See also
T. iii. pp. 586, 592, and Augustine, e. g. Enarr. in Ps. 90 ; Sermo
ii. c. 6). If, therefore, faith desires and needs no special miracle,
this is only because to it everything is fundamentally miracle,
everything an effect of divine, miraculous power. Religious faith
has no sense, no perception for Nature. Nature, as it exists for us,
has no existence for faith. To it the will of God is alone the

ground, the bond, the necessity of things. " God could indeed

have made us men, as he did Adam and Eve, by himself, without
father and mother, as he could reign without princes, as he could
give light without sun and stars, and bread without fields and
ploughs and labour. But it is not his will to do thus." Luther
(T. xvi. p. 614). It is true " God employs certain means, and so
conducts his miraculous works as to use the service of Nature and
instruments." Therefore we ought truly on very natural grounds
" not to despise the means and instruments of Nature." " Thus
it is allowable to use medicine, nay, it ought to be used, for it is a
means created in order to preserve health." Luther (T. i. p. 508).
But and that alone is decisive it is not necessary that I should
use natural means in order to be cured; I can be cured imme
diately by God. What God ordinarily does by means of Nature,
he can also do without, nay, in opposition to Nature, and actually
does it thus, in extraordinary cases, when he will. " God," says
Luther in the same place, " could indeed easily have preserved
Noah and the animals through a whole year without food, as he
preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ forty days without any food."
Whether he does it often or seldom is indifferent; it is enough if
he only does it once; what happens once can happen innumerable

APPENDIX. 303

times. A single miracle has universal significance the signi
ficance of an example. " This deed, the passage through the Red
Sea, happened as a figure and example, to show us that it will be
so with us." Luther (T. iii. p. 596). " These miracles are written
for us, who are chosen." Ib. (T. ix. p. 142). The natural means
which God employs when he does no miracle, have no more signi
ficance than those which he employs when he performs miracles.
If the animals, God so willing it, can live as well without food as
with it, food is in itself as unnecessary for the preservation of life,
as indifferent, as non-essential, as arbitrary, as the clay with which
Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man to whom he restored
sight, as the staff with which Moses divided the sea ("God
could have done it just as well without the staff"). "Faith is
stronger than heaven and earth, or all creatures." " Faith turns
water into stones ; out of fire it can bring water, and out of water
fi r e." -Luther (T. iii. pp. 564, 565). That is to say, for faith there
exists no limit, no law, no necessity, no Nature; there exists only
the will of God, against which all things and powers are nothing.
If therefore the believer, when in sickness and distress, has
recourse notwithstanding to natural means, he only follows the
voice of his natural reason. The one means of cure which is con
gruous with faith, which does not contradict faith, which is not
thrust upon it, whether consciously and voluntarily or not, from
without, the one remedy for all evil and misery is prayer; for
"prayer is almighty." Luther (T. iv. p. 27). Why then use a
natural means also ? For even in case of its application, the effect
which follows is by no means its own, but the effect of the super
natural will of God, or rather the effect of faith, of prayer ; for
prayer, faith determines the will of God. " Thy faith hath saved
thee." Thus the natural means which faith recognises in practice
it nullifies in theory, since it makes the effect of such means an
effect of God, i. e., an effect which could have taken place just as
well without this means. The natural effect is therefore nothing
else than a circumstantial, covert, concealed miracle ; a miracle
however which has not the appearance of a miracle, but can only
be perceived as such by the eyes of faith. Only in expression, not
in fact, is there any difference between an immediate and mediate,
a miraculous and natural operation of God. When faith makes use
of a natural means, it speaks otherwise tluan it thinks ; when it
supposes a miracle it speaks as it thinks, but in both cases it
thinks the same. In the mediate agency of God faith is in dis
union with itself, for the senses here deny what faith affirms ; in
miracle, 011 the contrary, it is at one with itself, for there the ap
pearance coincides with the reality, the senses with faith, the ex
pression with the fact. Miracle is the terminus technicus of faith.

801 APPENDIX.

13.

The Resurrection of Christ is bodily, i. e., personal immortality,
presented as a sensible indubitable fact.

" Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est. Ostendit se ipsuni dis-

cipulis et fidelibus suis: contrectata est soliditas corporis Con-

firmatatides estnon solum in cordibus, sed etiam in oculis hominum."
Augustinus (Serniones ad Pop. S. 242, c. 1. S. 361, c. 8. See
also on this subject Melancthon, Loci: de Resurr. Mort.). "The

philosophers held that by death the soul was released from the

body, and that after it was thus set free from the body, as from a
prison, it came into the assembly of the gods, and was relieved
from all corporeal burthens. Of such an immortality the philo
sophers allowed men to dream, though they did not hold it to
be certain, nor could defend it. But the Holy Scriptures teach of
the resurrection and eternal life in another manner, and place the
hope of it so certainly before our eyes, that we cannot doubt it."
Luther (T. i. p. 549).

14.

Christianity made man an extramundane, supernatural being.
" We have here no abiding city, but we seek one to come." Heb.
xiii. 14. "Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from
the Lord." 2 Cor. v. 6. " If in this body, which is properly our
own, we are strangers, and our life in this body is nothing else than
a pilgrimage; how much more then are the possessions which we
have for the sake of the body, such as fields, houses, gold, <fcc.,
nothing else than idle, strange things, to be used as if we were on a
pilgrimage?" " Therefore we must in this life live like strangers
until we reach the true fatherland, and receive a better life which
is eternal." Luther (T. ii. pp. 240, 370 a). " Our conversation
(TroX/T-ev/ja, civitas aut jus civitatis) is in heaven, from whence also
we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change
our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body, according
to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto
himself." Phil. iii. 20, 21. " Neque mundus generat hominem, neque
mundi Jwmo pars est. Lactantius (Div. Inst. 1. ii. c. 6). " Coelum
de mundo : homo supra mundum" Ambrosius (Epist. 1. vi. Ep.
38, ed. cit.). " Agnosce o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam

conditionis humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo corpus sed

est tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nee omnino comparandus es
caeteris creaturis" Bernardus (Opp. Basil. 1552, p. 79). "At
Christianus ita supra totum mundum ascendit, nee consistit

APPENDIX. 305

in coeli convexis, sed transcensis mente locis supercoelestibus
ductu divini spiritus velut jam extra mundum raptus offert
Deo preces." Origenes (contra Celsum. ed. Hoeschelio, p. 370).
" Totus quidem iste mundus adunius animae preiium aestimari non
potest. Non enim pro toto mundo Deus animam suam dare voluit,
quam pro anima humana dedit. Sublimius est ergo animae pre-
tium, quae non nisi sanguine Christi redimi potest." Medit. devotiss.
c. ii. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) " Sapiens

anima Deum tantummodo sapiens hominem in homine exuit,

Deoque plene et in omnibus affecta, omnem infra Deum creaturam
non aliter quam Deus attendit. Relicto ergo corpore et corporeis
omnibus curis et impediments omnium quae sunt praeter Deum
obliviscitur, niliilque praeter Deum attendens quasi se solam,
solumque Deum existimans," etc. De Nat. et Dign. Amoris Divini
cc. 14, 15. (Ib.) " Quid agis frater in saeculo, qui major es mundoT'
Hieronymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Yitae solit.).

15.

The celibate and monachism of course only in their original,
religious significance and form are sensible manifestations, neces
sary consequences, of the supranaturalistic, extramundane character
of Christianity. It is true that they also contradict Christianity ;
the reason of this is shown by implication in the present work ; but
only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contra
dict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical Christianity;
they contradict Christian love so far as this love relates to man,
but not Christian faith, not Christian love so far as it loves man
only for God's sake. There is certainly nothing concerning celibacy
and monachism in the Bible ; and that is very natural. In the
beginning of Christianity the great matter was the recognition of
Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah the conversion of the heathens
and Jews. And this conversion was the more pressing, the nearer
the Christians supposed the day of judgment and the destruction
of the world; periculum in mora. There was not time or oppor
tunity for a life of quietude, for the contemplation of monachism.
Hence there necessarily reigned at that time a more practical and
even liberal sentiment than at a later period, when Christianity
had attained to worldly dominion, and thus the enthusiasm of
proselytism was extinguished. " Apostoli (says the Church, quite
correctly: Carranza, 1. c. p. 256) cum fides indperet, ad fidelium
imbecillitatem se magis demittebant, cum autem evangelii prae-
dicatio sit magis ampliata, oportet et Pontifices ad perfectam con-
tinentiam vitam suam dirigere." When once Christianity realized

306 APPENDIX.

itself in a worldly form, it must also necessarily develop the
supranaturalistic, supramundane tendency of Christianity into a
literal separation from the world. And this disposition to separa
tion from life, from the body, from the world, this first hyper-
cosmic then anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical disposi
tion and spirit. In addition to the passages already cited, and
others universally known, the following may stand as examples;
"He that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life
eternal." " I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no
good thing." Rom. vii. 18. ("Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in
agendo origenes ad corpus referebant." J. G. Rosenmiiller Scholia.)
" Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
yourselves also with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in
the flesh hath ceased from sin." 1 Pet. iv. 1. "I have a desire to
depart, and to be with Christ." Phil. i. 23. " We are confident
and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the
Lord." 2 Cor. v. 8. Thus, according to these passages, the parti
tion-wall between God and man is the body (at least the fleshly,
actual body) ; thus the body as a hindrance to union with God is
sometliing worthless, to be denied. That by the world, which
is denied in Christianity, is by no means to be understood a life
of mere sensuality, but the real objective world, is to be inferred in
a popular manner from the belief that at the advent of the Lord,
i. e., the consummation of the Christian religion, heaven and earth
will pass away.

The difference between the belief of the Christians and that of the
heathen philosophers as to the destruction of the world is not to be
overlooked. The Christian destruction of the world is only a crisis
of faith, the separation of the Christian from all that is anti-
christiaii, the triumph of faith over the world, a judgment of God,
an anti-cosmical, supernaturalistic act. " But the heavens and the
earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved
unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly
men." 2 Pet. iii. 7. The heathen destruction of the world, is a
crisis of the Cosmos itself, a process which takes place according to
law, which is founded in the constitution of Nature. " Sic origo
mundi, non minus solem et lunam et vices siderum et animalium
ortus, quam quibus mutarentur terrena, contiuuit. In his fait
inundatio, quae non secus quam hiems, quam aestas, lege mundi
venit." Seneca (Nat. Qu. 1. iii. c. 29). It is the principle of life
immanent in the world, the essence of the world itself, which evolves
this crisis out of itself. " A qua et ignis terrenis dominaiitur. Ex
his ortus et ex his interitus est" (Ibid. c. 28.) " Quidquid est, non
erit; necperibit, sed resolvetur." (Idem Epist. 71.) The Christians
excluded themselves from the destruction of the world. " And he

APPENDIX. 307

shall send liis angels with a great sound of a trumpet ; and they
shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other." Matt. xxiv. 31. " But there shall not a hair

of your head perish And then shall they see the Son of Man

coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these
things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads;
for your redemption draweth nigh." Luke xxi. 18, 27, 28. "Watch
ye therefore and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to
escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
the Son of Man." Ib. 36. The heathens, on the contrary, identified
their fate with the fate of the world. "Hoc universum, quod omnia

divina humanaque complectitur dies aliquis dissipabit et in

confusionem veterem tenebrasque demerget. Eat nunc aliquis
et singulas comploret animas. Quis tarn superbae impotentisque
arrogantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia ad eundem
finem revocantis, se unum ac suos seponi velit" Seneca (Cons, ad
Polyb. cc. 20, 21). "Ergo quandoque erit terminus rebus humanis.

Non muri quenquain, non turres tuebuntur. Non proderunt

templa awpplicibiw* (Nat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we have again
the characteristic distinction between heathenism and Christianity.
The heathen forgot himself in the world, the Christian forgot the
world in himself. And as the heathen identified his destructio
with the destruction of the world, so he identified his immortality
with the immortality of the world. To the heathen, man was a
common, to the Christian, a select being ; to the latter immortality
was a privilege of man, to the former a common good which he vin
dicated to himself only because, and in so far as, he assigned to other
beings a share in it also. The Christians expected the destruction of
the world immediately, because the Christian religion has in it no
cosmical principle of development : all which developed itself in
Christendom developed itself only in contradiction with the original
nature of Christianity ; because by the existence of God in the
flesh, i. e., by the immediate identity of the species with the indivi
dual, everything was attained, the thread of history was cut short, no
other thought of the future remained than the thought of a repetition,
of the second coming of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary,
placed the destruction of the world in the distant future, because,
living in the contemplation of the universe, they did not set heaven
and earth in motion on their own account, because they extended
and freed their self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species,
placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the species, and thus
did not reserve the future to themselves, but left it to the coming
generations. " Yeniet tempus quo posteri nostri tain aperta nos
nescisse mirentur." Seneca (Nat. Qu. 1. vii. c. 25). He who places
immortality in himself abolishes the principle of historical develop-

308 APPENDIX.

ment. The Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new
heaven and a new earth. But with this Christian, i. e., super-
terrestrial earth, the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end of
the actual world is come. The heathens, on the contrary, set no
limits to the development of the Cosmos ; they supposed the world
to be destroyed only to arise again renovated as a real world; they
granted it eternal life. The Christian destruction of the world
was a matter of feeling, an obj ect of fear and longing ; the heathen,
a matter of reason, an inference from the contemplation of nature.

Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the principle of the
regenerate Christian world. " Virgo genuit mundi salutem ; virgo

peperit vitam universorum Virgo portavit, quern mundus

iste capere aut sustinere non potest Per virum autem et

mulierem caro ejecta de paradiso : per virginem juncta est Deo."
Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). " Jure laudatur bona uxor, sed
melius pia virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo. (1 Cor. vii.) Bonum
conjugium, per quod est inventa posteritas successionis humanae;
sed melius virginitas, per quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita
et coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura
successit: per virginem solus evenit." (Id. Ep. 81.) " Castitas

jungit hominem coelo Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior

est continentia vidualis. Optima vero integritas virginalis." De
modo bene vivendi. Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of
Bernard.) " Pulchritudinem hominisnon concupiscas" (ibid. S. 23).

" JFornicatio major est omnibus peccatis Audi beati Isidori

verba: Fornicatione coinquinari deterius est omni peccato." (Ibid.)
" Virginitas cui gloriae merito non praefertur? Angelicae? Angelus
habet virginitatem, sed non carnem, sane felicior, quam. fortior in
hac parte." Bernardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Virginem). " Me
mento semper, quod paradisi colonum de possessione sua mulier
ejecerit. Hieronymus (Ep. Nepotiano). " In paradiso virginitas

conversabatur Ipse Christus virginitatis gloria non modo ex

patre sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus, sed et homo
secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno consortio
incarnatus est. Et ipse virginitatem veram et perfectam esse, in se
ipso demonstravit. Unde Jianc nobis legem non statuit (non enim
omnes capiunt verbum hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos erudivit"
Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. fidei, 1. iv. c. 25).

Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of the sensual impulse, the
negation of difference of sex and consequently of sexual love, for
what is this without the other? is the principle of the Christian
heaven and salvation ; then necessarily the satisfaction of the sexual
impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is founded, is the source of
sin and evil. And so it is held. The mystery of original sin is the
mystery of sexual desire. All men are conceived in sin because they

APPENDIX. 309

were conceived with sensual, i. e., natural pleasure. The act of genera
tion, as an act of sensual enjoyment, is sinful. Sin is propagated from
Adam down to us, simply because its propagation is the natural act
of generation. This is the mystery of Christian original sin. " Atque
hie quam alienus a vero sit, etiam hie reprehenditur, quod voluptatem
in homine Deo authore creatam asserit principaliter. Sed hoc divinae
scriptura redarguit, quae serpentis insidiis atque illecebris infusam
Adae atque Evae voluptatem docet, siquidem ipse serpens voluptas

sit Quomodo igitur voluptas ad paradisum revocare nos potest,

quae sola nos paradiso exuitf Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82).
" Voluptas ipsa sine culpa nullatenus esse potest." Petrus L. (1. iv.
dist. 31, c. 5). " Onmes in peccatis nati sumus, et ex carnis delec-
tatione concepti culpam originalem nobiscum traximus." Gregorius
(Petrus L. 1. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). " Firmissime tene et nullatenus
dubites, omnem hominem, qui per concubitum viri et mulieris coii-

cipitur, cum originali peccato nasci Ex his datur intelligi,

quid sit originate peccatum, scl. vitium concupiscentiae, quod in
omiies concupisceiitialiter natos per Adam intravit." (Ibid. c. 3, see
also dist. 31, c. 1.) " Peccati causa ex came est." Ambrosius (ibid.)
" Christus peccatum non habet, nee originale traxit, nee suum addidit :
extra voluptatem carnalis libidinis venit, non ibi fuit complexus

maritalis Omnis generatus, damnatus." Augustinus (Serni.

ad pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). "TLomonatus de muliere et ob hoc cum
reatu Bernardus (de consid. 1. ii.) " Peccatum quomodo non

fuit, ubi libido non defuit ? Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus

asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritu s. non est, ne dicam de peccato est?"
Id. (Epist. 174. Edit, cit.) "All that is born into the world of
man and woman is sinful, under God's anger and curse, condemned
to death." " All men born of a father and mother are children of
wrath by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. ii." " We have by
nature a tainted, sinful conception and birth." Luther (T. xvi.
246, 573). It is clear from these examples, that "carnal inter
course"- even a kiss is carnal intercourse is the radical sin, the
radical evil of mankind; and consequently the basis of marriage,
the sexual impulse, honestly outspoken, is a product of the devil.
It is true that the creature as the work of God is good, but it has
long ceased to exist as it was created. The devil has alienated the
creature from God and corrupted it to the very foundation.
" Cursed be the ground for thy sake." The fall of the creature,
however, is only an hypothesis by which faith drives from its mind
the burdensome, disquieting contradiction, that Nature is a product
of God, and yet, as it actually is, does not harmonize with God, i. e.,
with the Christian sentiment.

Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh, matter
as matter, to be something sinful, impure; on the contrary, it

310 APPENDIX.

contended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion
and rejected marriage. (See for example Augustiu. Contra
Faustum, 1. 29, c. 4, 1. 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata,
lib. iii. and Bernard: Super Cantica, Sermo 66.) But quite
apart from the hatred to heretics which so inspired the holy
Christian church and made it so politic, this protest rested on
grounds which by no means involved the recognition of Nature
as such, and under limitations, i. e., negations, which make the
recognition of Nature merely apparent and illusory. The distinc
tion between the heretics and the orthodox is only this, that the
latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly, what the former declared
plainly, directly, but for that very reason offensively. Pleasure is
not separable from matter. Material pleasure is nothing further,
so to speak, than the joy of matter in itself, matter proving itself
by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every pleasure a manifestation
of force, energy. Every organic function is, in a normal condition,
united with enjoyment; even breathing is a pleasurable act, which
is not perceived as such only because it is an uninterrupted process.
He therefore who declares generation, fleshly intercourse, as such,
to be pure, but fleshly intercourse united with sensual pleasure to
be a consequence of original sin and consequently itself a sin, acknow
ledges only the dead, not the living flesh he raises a mist before
us, he condemns, rejects the act of generation, and matter in general,
though under the appearance of not rejecting it, of acknow
ledging it. The unhypocritical, honest acknowledgment of sensual
life is the acknowledgment of sensual pleasure. In. brief, he who,
like the Bible, like the Church, does not acknowledge fleshly
pleasure that, be it understood, which is natural, normal, insepar
able from life does not acknowledge the flesh. That which is not
recognised as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it should
be the ultimate end) is in truth not recognised at all. Thus he who
allows me wine only as medicine, forbids me the enjoyment of wine.
Let not the liberal supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged.
For that scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water into
wine, beyond Nature into the region of supernaturalism. Where, as
in Christianity, a supernatural, spiritual body is regarded as the
true, eternal body, i. e., a body from which all objective, sensual
impulses, all flesh, all nature, is removed, there real, i. e., sensual,
fleshly matter is denied, is regarded as worthless, nothing.

Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law (save at a
later period for the priests). But for the very reason that
chastity, or rather privation of marriage, of sex, is the highest,
the most transcendent, supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it can
not and must not be lowered into a common object of duty; it
stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and free
dom. " Christus hortatur idoneos ad coelibalum. ut donuin recte

APPENDIX. 311

idem Christus iis, qui puritatem extra conjugium non
retinent, praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant." Melancthon. (Re-
sponsio ad Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.) " Virginitas non estjussa,
sed admonita, quia nimis est excelsa" De modo bene viv. (Sermo
21.) "Et qui matrimonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui
non jungit, melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitanclum est,
et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non imponitur, sed pro-
ponitur. Et ideo bene Apostolus dixit: De virginibus autem
praecepturn non habeo, consilium autem do. Ubi praeceptum est,

ibi lex est, ubi consilium, ibi gratia est Praeceptum enim

castitatis est, consilium integritatis Sed nee vidua praeceptum

accipit, sed consilium. Consilium autem non semel datum, sed
saepe repetitmn." Ambrosius (Liber, de viduis). That is to say :
celibacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or
Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for the Christian
sentiment, which takes Christian virtue and perfection as the rule
of conscience, as the ideal of feeling, no despotic but a friendly
law, no public but a secret, esoteric law a mere counsel, i. e., a
law which does not venture to express itself as a law, a law for
those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. Thou mayst marry;
yes indeed ! without any fear of committing a sin, i. e., a public,
express, plebeian sin ; but thou dost all the better if thou dost not
marry ; meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly advice.
Omnia licent, sed omnia non expediunt. What is allowed in the first
member of the sentence is retracted in the second. Licet, says the
man ; non expedit, says the Christian. But only that which is good
for the Christian is for the man, so far as he desires to be a Chris
tian, the standard of doing and abstaining. " Quae non expediunt,
nee licent'" such is the conclusion arrived at by the sentiment of
Christian nobility. Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to
the weakness, or rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of nature
in Christianity, a falling short of the genuine, perfect Christian
sentiment; being, however, nevertheless good, laudable, even holy,
in so far as it is the best antidote to fornication. For its own sake,
as the self-enjoyment of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, not
consecrated ; thus the holiness of marriage in Christianity is only
an ostensible holiness, only illusion, for that which is not acknow
ledged for its own sake is not acknowledged at all, while yet there
is a deceitful show of acknowledgment. Marriage is sanctioned
not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but to restrict the flesh,
to repress it, to kill it to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. " Quae
res et viris et feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum 1 ?
Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro

adaequavit Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret

stupri affinitati." Tertullianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). " Et de ipso
conjugis melius aliquid, quam coiicessisti, monuisti." Augustinus

312 APPENDIX.

(Confess, x. c. 30)." " It is better to many than to burn." 1 Cor.
vii. 9. But how much better is it, says Tertullian, developing this

text, neither to marry nor to burn " Possum dicere, quod per-

mittitur bonum non est." (ad Uxorem, 1. i. c. 3) "De minoribus bonis

est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium

Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. Didi-
cimus enini ab Apostolo, humano generi propter vitandam fornica-
tioneni indultum esse conjugium." Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 26.
c. 2). " The Master of the Sentences says rightly, that in Paradise
marriage was ordained as service, but after sin as medicine." Luther
(T. i. p. 349). "Where marriage and virginity are compared,
certainly chastity is a nobler gift than marriage." Id. (T. i. p. 319).
" Those whom the weakness of nature does not compel to mar
riage, but who are such that they can dispense with marriage, these
do rightly to abstain from marriage." Id. (T. v. p. 538). Christian
sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which is not Christian,
only that which is not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i. e.,
in which Nature is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if
marriage, if Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is
not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of Christianity;
and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the
semblance of holiness with which Christianity invests marriage, in
order to becloud the understanding, but a pious illusion ? Can the
Christian fulfil his marriage duties without surrendering himself,
willingly or not, to the passion of love? Yes indeed. The Christian
has for his object the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the
satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means in itself un
holy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates the means. " Conjugalis
concubitus generandi gratia non habet culpam." Thus the Christian,
at least the true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny,
Nature, while he satisfies it ; he does not wish for, he rather con
temns the means' in itself, he seeks only the end in abstracto ; he
does with religious, supranaturalistic horror, what he does, though
against his will, with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does
not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature before his
faith, and his faith before Nature, i. e., he publicly disavows what he
privately does. Oh how much better, truer, purer-hearted in this
respect were the heathens, who made no secret of their sensuality,
than the Christians who, while gratifying the flesh, at the same
time deny that they gratify it ! To this day the Christians adhere
theoretically to their heavenly origin and destination ; to this day,
out of supranaturalistic affectation, they deny their sex, and turn
away with mock modesty from every sensuous, picture, every naked
statue, as if they were angels; to this day they repress, even by
legal force, every open-hearted, ingenuous self-confession even of the

APPENDIX. 313

most uncorrupt sensuality, only stimulating by this public prohibi
tion the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speaking
briefly and plainly, is the distinction between Christians and
heathens in this matter 1 The heathens confirmed, the Christians
contradicted their faith by their lives. The heathens do what they
mean to do, the Christians what they do not mean : the former,
where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter against their
conscience ; the former sin simply, the latter doubly ; the former
from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy of the flesh. The specific
crime of the heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licen
tiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, theological
crime of hypocrisy, that hypocrisy of which Jesuitism is indeed
the most striking, world-historical, but nevertheless only a particular
manifestation. " Theology makes sinners," says Luther Luther,
whose positive qualities, his heart and understanding, so far as they
applied themselves to natural things, were not perverted by theo
logy. And Montesquieu gives the best commentary on this saying
of Luther's when he says: "La devotion trouve, pour faire de
mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu'un simple honnete horn me ne
saurait trouver." (Pensees Diverses.)

16.

The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which is excluded
from heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven the
Christian is free from that whicJi he wishes to be free from here
free from the sexual impulse, free from matter, free from Nature in
general. " In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." Matt. xxii.
30. " Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall
destroy (^arapy/yo-ei make useless) both it and them." 1 Cor. vi.
13. " Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorrup-
tion." Ib. xv. 50. " They shall hunger no more, neither thirst
any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."
Rev. vii. 16. "And there shall be no night there; and they
need no candle, neither light of the sun." Ib. xxii. 5. " Come-
dere, bibere, vigilare, donnire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris neces-
sitatibus naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria est et afnictio homini
devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus et liber ab omni peccato.
Utinam non essent istae necessitates, sed solum spirituales animae
refectiones, quas heu ! satis . raro degustamus." Thomas a K. (de
imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25. See also on this subject S. Gregorii Nyss. de
anima et resurr. Lipsiae, 1837. pp. 98, 144, 153). It is true that
the Christian immortality, in distinction from the heathen, is not

314 APPENDIX.

the immortality of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the
whole man. " Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the heathen
philosophers) atque ineorruptibilis. Nos autem, quibus divina

revelatio illuxit novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus per-

purgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam corpus ad immortali-
tatem assumptum iri suo tempore." Baco de "Verul. (de augm.
Scien. 1. i.) On this account, Celsus reproached the Christians with
a desideriutn corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been
already remarked, an immaterial, i. e., a thoroughly fanciful, sub
jective body a body which is the direct negation of the real,
natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not the
recognition, or glorification of Nature, of matter as such, but rather
the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the un
limited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the actual,
objective body is a limitation.

As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be
like, the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as
on other weighty subjects; it only calls them Trvew/xara spirits, and
declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians ex
pressed themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely,
but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not; a
difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic body
is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of the
resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite, con
ceptions ; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case,
necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the re
ligious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in
the incompatible propositions, that the body which is raised is the
same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and
that nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to
the hair, " cum nee periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus : Capillus
de capite vestro non peribit." (Augustinus und Petrus L. 1. iv. dist.
44, c. 1.) Nevertheless it is the same in such a way, that every
thing burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental
feeling, is removed. " Immo sicut dicit Augustinus : Detrahentur
vitia et remaiiebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et
unguium est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enini non peccasset
Iwmo, crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quan-
titatem, sicut in leonibus et avibus." (Addit. Henrici ab Yurimaria
ibid. Edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naive, ingenuous,
confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and
yet another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be
a maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently
the resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover
they are the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that

APPENDIX. 315

they are in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing
theologians of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied
the older theologians ? Because their faith is itself only general,
indefinite, i. e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to
possess; because, from fear of their understanding, which has long
been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith
by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they
suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of their
faith, and conceal them from their understanding.

1 17.

What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what it
renounces here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this world, faith
occupies itself with nullifying the body ; in the other world, with
establishing it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul
from the body, there the main point is the reunion of the body
with the soul. " I would live not only according to the soul, but
according to the body also. I would have the corpus with me ; I
would that the body should return to the soul and be united with
it." Luther (T. vii. p. 90). In that which is sensuous, Christ is
supersensuous ; but for that reason, in the supersensuous he is
sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by no means merely
spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous a state in which all
wishes are fulfilled. "Whatever thy heart seeks joy and
pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance. For it is said, God
shall be all in all. And where God is, there must be all good
things that can ever be desired." " Dost thou desire to see acutely,
and to hear through walls, and to be so light that thou mayst be
wherever thou wilt in a moment, whether here below on the earth,
or above in the clouds, that shall all be, and what more thou canst
conceive, which thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have
abundantly if thou hast Him." Luther (T. x. pp. 380, 381). Cer
tainly eating, drinking, and marriage find no place in the Christian
heaven, as they do in the Mahomedan; but only because with
these enjoyments want is associated, and with want matter, i. e.,
passion, dependence, unhappiness. " Illic ipsa indigentia morietur.
Tune vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens eris." Augustin.
(Serm. ad pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this earth are only
medicines, says the same writer; true health exists only in im
mortal life " vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." The
heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as wishes,
as omnipotent as imagination. " Futurae ergo resurrectionis corpus
imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos sumere non potuerit, imper-
fectae felicitatis, si cibus eguerit? Augustin. (Epist. 102,

p 2

316 APPENDIX.

6, edit, cit.) Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue,
without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without
mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal wellbeing. Even
the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought
or faith, is sensational, immediate kno wleclge intuit i on. The Chris
tians are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia Dei,
will be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin. Serm.
ad pop. p. 277, and Bucldeus, Comp. Inst. Th. 1. ii. c. 3, 4.)
But in this difference we again have only the contradiction
between the abstract and the real God ; the former is certainly not
an object of vision, but the latter is so. " Flesh and blood is the

wall between me and Christ, which will be torn away There

everything will be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the
mouth taste, and the nose smell it ; the treasure will shine into the

soul and life Faith will cease, and I shall behold with my

eyes." Luther (T. ix. p. 595). It is clear from this again, that
God, as he is an object of religious sentiment, is nothing else than a
product of the imagination. The heavenly beings are super-
sensuous sensuous, immaterial material beings, i. <?., beings of the
imagination; but they are like God, nay, identical with God,
consequently God also is a supersensuous sensuous, an immaterial
material being.

18.

TJie contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of natur
alism and supernaturalism. In the first place the natural qualities
of water are pronounced essential to Baptism. " Si quis dixerit
aquam veram et naturalem non esse de necessitate Baptismi atque
ideo verba ilia domini nostri Jesu Christi : Nisi quis renatus fuerit
ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit,
anathema sit. Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.)

De substantia hujus sacramenti sunt verbum et elementum

Non ergo in olio liquor e potest consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua.
Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 3, c. 1, c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptismi

requiritur major quam unius guttae quantitas Necesse est ad

valorem baptismi fieri contactum pliysicum inter aquam et corpus

baptizati, ita ut non sufficiat, vestes tan turn ipsius aqua tingi

Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur, ut saltern talis pars corporis
abluatur, ratione cujus homo solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, collum,
huineri, pectus et praesertim caput. Theolog. Schol. (P. Mezger.
Aug. Yind. 1695. T. iv. pp. 230, 231). Aquam, eamque veram ac

naturalem in baptismo adhibendam esse, exemplo Joannis

non minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet. F.
Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. 1. iv. c. i. 5)." Thus water
is essential. But now conies the negation of the natural qualities

APPENDIX. 317

of water. The significance of Baptism is not the natural power
of water, but the supernatural, almighty power of the Word of
God, who instituted the use of water as a sacrament, and now by
means of this element imparts himself to man in a supernatural,
miraculous manner, but who could just as well have chosen any
other element in order to produce the same effect. So Luther, for
example, says : " Understand the distinction, that Baptism is quite
another thing than all other water, not on account of its natural
quality, but because here something more noble is added. For God
himself brings hither his glory, power, and might as St. Augus
tine also hath taught : ' accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacra-
mentum.' " " Baptize them in the name of the Father, &c. Water

without these words is mere water Who will call the baptism

of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost mere water? Do we not see
what sort of spice God puts into this water? When sugar is thrown
into water it is no longer water, but a costly claret or other bever
age. Why then do we here separate the word from the water and
say, it is mere water ; as if the word of God, yea, God himself, were

not with and in the water Therefore, the water of Baptism is

such a water as takes away sin, death, and unhappiness, helps us in
heaven and to everlasting life. It is become a precious sugared
water, aromaticum, and restorative, since God has mingled himself
therewith." Luther (T. xvi. p. 105).

As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing without
water, though this water is nevertheless in itself indifferent, so is it
with the wine and bread in the Eucharist, even in Catholicism,
where the substance of bread and wine is destroyed by the power
of the Almighty. " Accideiitia eucharistica tamdiu continent
Christum, quamdiu retinent illud temperamentum, cum quo con-
naturaliter panis et vini substantia permaneret : ut econtra, quando
tanta fit temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut sub iis
substantia panis et vini naturaliter remanere non posset, desinunt
continere Christum." Theol. Schol. (Mezger. 1. c. p. 292.) That is
to say : so long as the bread remains bread, so long does the bread
remain flesh ; when the bread is gone, the flesh is gone. Therefore
a due portion of bread, at least enough to render bread recognisable
as such, must be present, for consecration to be possible. (Ib. p.
284.) For the rest, Catholic transubstantiation, the conversio
realis et physica totius panis in corpus Ckristi, is only a consistent
continuation of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. By
the transformation of water into wine, of a staff into a serpent, of
stones into brooks (Ps. cxiv.), by these biblical transubstantiations
the Catholics explained and proved the turning of bread into flesh.
Pie who does not stumble at those transformations, has no right, no
reason to hesitate at accepting this. The Protestant doctrine of

318 APPENDIX.

the Lord's Supper is not less in contradiction with reason than the
Catholic. " The body of Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than
in two ways, spiritually or bodily. Again, this bodily partaking
cannot be visible or perceptible," i. e., is not bodily, " else no bread
would remain. Again, it cannot be mere bread ; otherwise it would
not be a bodily communion of the body of Christ, but of bread.
Therefore the bread broken must also be truly and corporeally the
body of Christ, although invisibly" (i. e., incorporeally). Luther
(T. xix. p. 203). The difference is, that the Protestant gives no
explanation concerning the mode in which bread can be flesh and
wine blood. " Thereupon we stand, believe, and teach, that the body
of Christ is truly and corporeally taken and eaten in the Lord's
Supper. But how this takes place, or how he is in the bread, we
know not, and are not bound to know." Id. (ut sup. p. 393.)
" He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our fanatics and
factionaries do, how it can be that bread is the body of Christ and
wine the blood of Christ." Id. (T. xvi. p. 220.) " Cum retineamus
doctrinam de praesentia corporis Christi, quid opus est quaerere de
modo ?" Melancthon (Vita Mel. Camerarius. Ed. Strobel. Halae,
1777. p. 446). Hence the Protestants as well as the Catholics took
refuge in Omnipotence, the grand source of ideas contradictory to
reason. (Concord. Summ. Beg. Art. 7. Aff. 3. Negat. 13. See
also Luther, e. g. T. xix. p. 400.)

An instructive example of theological incompreheiisibleness and
supernaturalness is afforded by the distinction, in relation to the
Eucharist (Concordienb. Summ. Beg. art. 7), between partaking
with the mouth and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner.
" We believe, teach, and confess that the body of Christ is taken in
the bread and wine, not alone spiritually by faith, but also with the
mouth, yet not in a Capernaitic, but a supernatural heavenly man
ner, for the sake of sacramental union." " Probe namque discrimen
inter manducationem oralem et naturalem tenendum est. Etsi
enim oralem manducationem adseramus atque propugnemus, natu
ralem tamen non admittimus Omnis equidem manducatio

naturalis etiam oralis est. sed non vicissim oralis manducatio statim

est naturalis Unicus itaque licet sit actus, unicumque

organum, quo panem et corpus Christi, itemque vinum et sangui-
nem Christi accipimus, modus (yes, truly, the mode) nihilominus
niaximopere differt, cum panem et vinum modo naturali et sensibili,
corpus et sanguinem Christi stmul equidem cum pane et vino, at modo
supernatwrali et insensibili, qui adeo etiam a nemine mortalium
(nor, assuredly, by any God) explicare potest, revera interim
et ore corporis accijriamus" Jo. Er. Buddeus (1. c. Lib. v. c. i.

APPENDIX. 319

19.

Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict each other in
Christianity. It is true that God, the object of faith, is in him
self the idea of the species in a mystical garb the common
Father of men and so far love to God is mystical love to man.
But God is not only the universal being; he is also a peculiar,
personal being, distinguished from Love. Where the being is dis
tinguished from love arises arbitrariness. Love acts from necessity,
personality from will. Personality proves itself as such only by
arbitrariness; personality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory; it
desires only to assert itself, to enforce its own authority. The
highest worship of God as a personal being, is therefore the wor
ship of God as an absolutely unlimited, arbitrary being. Per
sonality, as such, is indifferent to all substantial determinations
which lie in the nature of things; inherent necessity, the coercion
of natural qualities, appears to it a constraint. Here we have the
mystery of Christian love. The love of God, as the predicate of
a personal being, has here the significance of grace, favour : God is
a gracious master, as in Judaism he was a severe master. Grace
is arbitrary love, love which does not act from an inward neces
sity of the nature, but which is equally capable of not doing what
it does, which could, if it would, condemn its object; thus it is a
groundless, unessential, arbitrary, absolutely subjective, merely
personal love. " He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and

whom he will he hardeneth. (Rom. ix. 18.) The king

does what he will. So is it with the will of God. He has perfect
right and full power to do with us and all creatures as he will.
And no wrong is done to us. If His will had a measure or
rule, a law, ground, or cause, it would not be the divine will.
For what He wills is right, because He wills it. Where there

is faith and the Holy Spirit it is believed that God would

be good and kind even if He consigned all men to damna
tion. ' Is not Esau Jacob's brother? said the Lord. Yet I have
loved Jacob and hated Esau.' " Luther (T. xix. pp. 83, 87, 90,
91, 97). Where love is understood in this sense, jealous watch
is kept that man attribute nothing to himself as merit, that the
merit may lie with the divine personality alone ; there every idea
of necessity is carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling of
obligation and gratitude, to be able to adore and glorify the per
sonality exclusively. The Jews deified the pride of ancestry; the
Christians, on the other hand, interpreted and transformed the
Jewish aristocratic principle of hereditary nobility into the demo
cratic principle of nobility of merit. The Jew makes salvation

320 APPENDIX.

depend on birth, the Catholic on the merit of works, the Protestant
on the merit of faith. But the idea of obligation and merito-
riousness allies itself only with a deed, a work, which cannot be
demanded of me, or which does not necessarily proceed from my
nature. The works of the poet, of the philosopher, can be regarded
in the light of merit only as considered externally. They are
works of genius inevitable products : the poet must bring forth
poetry, the philosopher must philosophize. They have the highest
satisfaction in the activity of creation, apart from any collateral
or ulterior purpose. And it is just so with a truly noble moral
action. To the man of noble feeling, the noble action is natural :
he does not hesitate whether he should do it or not, he does not
place it in the scales of choice; he must do it. Only he who so
acts is a man to be confided in. Meritoriousiiess always involves
the notion that a thing is done, so to speak, out of luxury, not out
of necessity. The Christians indeed celebrated the highest act in
their religion, the act of God becoming man, as a work of love.
But Christian love in so far as it reposes on faith, on the idea of God
as a master, a Dominus, has the significance of an act of grace, of
a love in itself superfluous. A gracious master is one who foregoes
his rights, a master who does out of graciousness what, as a master,
he is not bound to do what goes beyond the strict idea of a
master. To God, as a master, it is not even a duty to do good to
man ; he has even the right for he is a master bound by no law
to annihilate man if he will. In fact, mercy is optional, non-neces
sary love, love in contradiction with the essence of love, love
Avhich is not an inevitable manifestation of the nature, love which
the master, the subject, the person, (personality is only an abstract,
modern expression for sovereignty,) distinguishes from himself as a
predicate, which he can either have or not have, without ceasing
to be himself. This internal contradiction necessarily manifested
itself in the life, in the practice of Christianity ; it gave rise to the
practical separation of the subject from the predicate, of faith
from love. As the love of God to man was only an act of grace,
so also the love of man to man was only an act of favour or grace
on the part of faith. Christian love is the graciousness of faith,
as the love of God is the graciousness of personality or supremacy.
(On the divine arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti's treatise
previously cited : " Vindicise arbitrii divini.")

Faith has within it a malignant principle. Christian faith, and
nothing else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and
destruction of heretics. Faith recognises man only on condition
that he recognises God, i.e., faith itself. Faith is the honour which
man renders to God. And this honour is due unconditionally. To
faith the basis of all duties is faith in God : faith is the absolute

APPENDIX. 321

duty duties to men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbe
liever is thus an outlaw * a man worthy of extermination. That
which denies God must be itself denied. The highest crime is the
crime laesae majestatis Dei. To faith God is a personal being the
supremely personal, inviolable, privileged being. The acme of per
sonality is honour; hence an injury towards the highest personality
is necessarily the highest crime. The Jwnour of God cannot be dis
avowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic conception. For
is not the personality, even the existence of God, a sensuous,
anthropomorphic conception 1 Let those who renounce the honour
be consistent enough to renounce the personality. From the idea
of personality results the idea of honour, and from this again the
idea of religious offences. " Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus
fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito ; quicunque vero idem scelus

erga Deum adrniserit lapidibus blaspkemiae causa obruitur."

(Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See also Deut. xii. whence the Catholics
deduce the right to kill heretics. Boehmer, 1. c. 1. v. T. vii.
44.) " Eos autem merito torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut irn-
pios, ut injustos, nisi profanus nemo deliberat: quum parentem
omnium et dominum omnium non minus sceleris sit ignware, quam
laedere" Minucii Fel. Oct. c. 35. " Ubi erunt legis praecepta
divinae, quae dicunt : honora patrem et matrem, si vocabulum
patris, quod in homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune vio-
latur?" Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf.) "Cur enim, cum datum
sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur
et sacrilegia permittantur? Anfidem non servare levius est animam
Deo, quam feminam viro?" Augustinus (de correct. Donatist. lib.
ad Bonifacium, c. 5). " Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulc-
tantur, quid de illis statuendum censemus, qui /idem pervertere
conantur?" Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. 1. dist.
vii.) " Si enim illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam ex-
honorari a quoquam licet, et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis
legalibus reus sistitur et injuriarum auctor jure damnatur: quanta
utique majoris piaculi crimen est, injuriosum quempiam Deo esse?
Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam perferentis crescit culpa
facientis, quia necesse est, quant o major est persona ejus qui contu-
meliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus, qui facit." Thus speaks
Salvianus (de gubernat. Dei, 1. vi. p. 218, edit, cit.) Salvianus,
who is called Magistrum Episcoporum, sui saeculi Jeremiam, Scrip-
tor em Christianissimum, Orbis ckristiani magistrum. But heresy,
unbelief in general heresy is only a definite, limited unbelief is
blasphemy, and thus is the highest, the most flagitious crime. Thus

* " Haereticus usu omnium jurium destitutus est, ut deportatus." J. H, Boehmer
(1. c. 1. v. Tit. vii. 223. See also Tit. vi.)

p3

322 APPENDIX.

to cite only one among innumerable examples, J. Oecolampadius
writes to Servetus : " Dum non summam patientiam prae me fero,
dolens Jesum Christum nliuni Dei sic dehonestari, parum christiane
tibi agere videor. In aliis mansuetus ero : in blasphemiis quae in
Christum, non item." (Historia Mich. Serveti. H. ab Allwoerden
Helmstadii, 1737. p. 13.) For what is blasphemy? Every nega
tion of an idea, of a definition, in which the honour of God, the
honour of faith is concerned. Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian
faith. Calvin said to Servetus, two hours before his death : " Ego
vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatas injurias fuisse per-
secutum," and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly
sustained by the Bible : " ab haeretico homine, qui avroKa-u^pirog
peccabat, secundum Pauli praeceptum discessi. (Ibid. p. 120.) Thus
it was by no means a personal hatred, though this may have been
conjoined, it was a religious hatred which brought Servetus to
the stake the hatred which springs from the nature of unchecked
faith. Even Melancthon is known to have approved the execution
of Servetus. The Swiss theologians, whose opinion was asked by
the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in their answer, from men
tioning the punishment of death,* but agreed with the Genevans in
this "horrendos Serveti erroresdetestandosesse, severiusque idcirco
in Servetum animadverteiidum." Thus there is no difference as to
the principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even Calvin
himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate the horrible mode
of death to which the Senate of Geneva condemned Servetus. (See
on this subject, e.g. M. Adami Yita Calvini, p. 90. Yita Bezae, p.
207. Yitae Theol. exter. Francof. 1618.) We have therefore to
consider this execution as an act of general significance as a work
of faith, and that not of Roman Catholic, but of reformed, biblical,
evangelical faith. That heretics must not be compelled to a pro
fession of the faith by force, was certainly maintained by most of
the lights of the church, but there nevertheless lived in them the
most malignant hatred of heretics. Thus, for example, St. Bernard
says (Super Cantica, 66) in relation to heretics: " Fides suadenda
est, non imponenda," but he immediately adds : " quamquam melius
procul dubio gladio coercerentur, illius videlicet, qui non sine causa
gladium portat,quamiiisuum errorem multostrajicerepermittantur."
If the faith of the present day no longer produces such flagrant
deeds of horror, this is due only to the fact that the faith of this

* Very many Christians rejected the punishment of death, but other criminal
punishments of heretics, such as banishment, confiscation punishments which
deprive of life indirectly they did not find in contradiction with their Christian
faith. See on this subject J. H. Boehmer, Jus. Eccl. Protest. 1. v. Tit. vii. e. g.
i. 155, 157, 162, 163.

APPENDIX. 323

age is not an uncompromising, living faith, but a sceptical, eclectic,
unbelieving faith, curtailed and maimed by the power of art and
science. Where heretics are no longer burned either in the fires of
this world or of the other, there faith itself has no longer any fire,
any vitality. The faith which allows variety of belief renounces its
divine origin and rank, degrades itself to a subjective opinion. It
is not to Christian faith, not to Christian love (i. e., love limited by
faith} ; no ! it is to doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious
scepticism, to free-thinkers, to heretics, that we owe tolerance, freedom
of opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted by the Christian church,
who alone fought for freedom of conscience. Christian freedom
is freedom in non-essentials only: on the fundamental articles of faith
freedom is not allowed. When, however, Christian faith faith
considered in distinction from love, for faith is not one with love,
" potestis habere fidem sine caritate" (Augustinus Serm. ad pop. 90)
is pronounced to be the principle, the ultimate ground of the
violent deeds of Christians towards heretics (that is, such deeds as
arose from real believing zeal) ; it is obviously not meant that faith
could have these consequences immediately and originally, but only
in its historical development. Still, even to the earliest Christians
the heretic was an antichrist, and necessarily so "adversus Christum
sunt haeretici" (Cyprianus, Epist. 76, 14, edit, cit.) accursed

"apostoli inepistolis haereticos exsecrati sunt" (Cyprianus, ib.

6) a lost being, doomed by God to hell and everlasting death.
" Thou nearest that the tares are already condemned and sentenced
to the fire. Why then wilt thou lay many sufferings on a heretic?
Dost thou not hear that he is already judged to a punishmen^
heavier than he can bear? Who art thou, that thou wilt interfere
and punish him who has already fallen under the punishment of a
more powerful master? What would I do against a thief already

sentenced to the gallows? God has already commanded his

angels, who in his own time will be the executioners of heretics."
Luther (T. xvi. p. 132). When therefore the State, the world,
became Christian, and also, for that reason, Christianity became
worldly, the Christian religion a State religion ; then it was a neces
sary consequence that the condemnation of heretics, which was at
first only religious or dogmatic, became a political, practical con
demnation, and the eternal punishment of hell was anticipated by
temporal punishment. If therefore the definition and treatment of
heresy as a punishable crime, is in contradiction with the Christian
faith, it follows that a Christian king, a Christian State, is in con
tradiction with it ; for a Christian State is that which executes the
Divine judgments of faith with the sword, which makes earth a

heaven to believers, a hell to unbelievers. " Docuimus pertinere

ad reyes reliyiosos, non solum adulteria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi

324 APPENDIX.

alia flagitia seu facinora, verum etiam sacrilegia severitate congrua
cohibere" Augustinus (Epist. ad Dulcitium). "Kings ought thus to
serve the Lord Christ, by helping with laws that his honour be fur
thered. Now when the temporal magistracy finds scandalous errors,
whereby the honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and men's sal
vation hindered, and a schism arises among the people where such

false teachers will not be admonished and cease from preaching : there
ought the temporal magistracy confidently to arm itself and know
that nothing else befits its office, but to apply the sword and all force,
that doctrine maybe pure and God's service genuine andunperverted,
and also that peace and unity may be preserved." Luther (T. xv. pp.
110, 111). Let it be further remarked here, that Augustine justi
fies the application of coercive measures for the awaking of Chris
tian faith, by urging that the apostle Paul was converted to Chris
tianity by a deed of force a miracle. (De Correct. Donat. c. 6.)
The intrinsic connexion between temporal and eternal, i. <?., political
and spiritual punishment is clear from this, that the same reasons
which have been urged against the temporal punishment of heresy,
are equally valid against the punishment of hell. If heresy or un
belief cannot be punished here because it is a mere mistake, neither
can it be punished by God in hell. If coercion is in contradiction
with the nature of faith, so is hell ; for the fear of the terrible conse
quence of unbelief, the torments of hell, urge to belief against
knowledge and will. Boehmer, in his Jus Eccl., argues that heresy
and unbelief should be struck out of the category of crimes, that
unbelief is only a vitium theologicum, a peccatum in Deum. But God,
in the view of faith, is not only a religious, but a political,
juridical being, the King of kings, the true head of the State.

" There is no power but of God it is the minister of God."

Horn. xiii. 1,4. If therefore the juridical idea of majesty, of kingly
dignity and honour, applies to God, sin against God, unbelief, must
by consequence come under the definition of crime. And as with
God, so with faith. Where faith is still a truth, and a public truth,
there no doubt is entertained that it can be demanded of every one,
that every one is bound to believe. Be it further observed, that
the Christian Church has gone so far in its hatred against heretics, that
according to the canon law even the suspicion of heresy is a crime,
"ita ut de jure canonico revera crimen suspecti detur, cujus existen-
tiam frustra in jure civili quaerimus." Boehmer (1. c. v. Tit. vii.
23-42).

The command to love enemies extends only to personal enemies,
not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. " Does not the Lord
Christ command that we should love even our enemies ? How
then does David here boast that he hates the assembly of the

wicked, and sits not with the ungodly? For the sake of the

person I should love them; but for the sake of the doctrine I should

APPENDIX. 325

hate them. And thus I must hate them or hate God, who com
mands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone What

I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach some
thing which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed; .
thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be
uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the

place of love And so David means to say: I hate them, not

because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and
wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify, and
persecute the word of God." " Faith and love are two things.
Faith endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love
blesses: faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks for
bearance and forgiveness." " Rather than God's word should
fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed ;
for through heresy men lose God himself." Luther (T. vi. p. 94.
T. v. pp. 624, 630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the
Deutsches Jahrb. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii.
(cxxxix.) As Luther distinguishes the person from the enemy of
God, so Augustine here distinguishes the man from the enemy of
God, from the unbeliever, and says : we should hate the ungodli
ness in the man, but love the humanity in him. But what, then,
in the eyes of faith, is the man in distinction from faith, man
without faith, i. e., without God ? Nothing ; for the sum of all
realities, of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good and essential,
is faith, as that which alone apprehends and possesses God. It is
true that man as man is the image of God, but only of the natural
God, of God as the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only
God as he manifests himself outwardly; the true God, God as he
is in himself, the inward essence of God, is the triune God, is espe
cially Christ. (See Luther T. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and T. xvi. p. 581.)
And the image of this true, essential, Christian God, is only the
believer, the Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his
own sake, but for God's. " Diligendus est propter Deum, Deus vero
propter se ipsum." (Augustinus de doctrina chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27.)
How, then, should the unbelieving man, who has no resemblance
to the true God, be an object of love 1 ?

20.

Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natural
unity founded in Nature and Love, a supernatural unity
the unity of Faith. " Inter Christianum et gentilem non fides

tantum debet, sed etiam vita distinguere Nolite, ait Apo-

stolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus Sit ergo inter nos et illos

maxima separatio." Hieronymus (Epist. Cselantise matronse)

" Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae Nam cum

326 APPENDIX.

ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotal! et benedictione sanctificari
oporteat : quomodo potest conjugium did, ubi non estfidei concordia ?
...Saepe plerique capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodiderunt."-
Ambrosius. (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.) " JSTon enini licet christiano cum
gentili vel judaeo mire coujugiuni." Petrus L. (1. iv. dist. 39, c. 1).
And this separation is by no means unbiblical. On the contrary,
we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal directly to the
Bible. The well-known passage of the apostle Paul concerning
marriage between heathens and Christians relates only to marriages
which had taken place before conversion, not to those which were
yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what Peter Lom
bard says in the book already cited. " The first Christians did not
acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who sought
to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This
they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all
love of kindred was to be despised ; inasmuch as the brother
hood of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the Father
land and a common name is not so dear, but that we have a horror
even of our parents, if they seek to advise something against the
Lord." G. Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersteii Christen. B. iv. c. 2).
" Qui amat patrern et matrem plus quam me, non est me dignus

Matth. x in hoc vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes

Alioquin quid mihi et vobis 1 Quid a vobis habeo nisi peccatum et
miseriam ? " Bernardus (Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae monachi
ad parentes suos). " Etsi impium est, contemnere matrem, con-
temnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est." Bernhardus (Ep.
104. See also Epist. 351, ad Uugonem novitium). " Audi sententiam

Isidori: multi canonicorum, monachorum temporal! salute

suorum parentum perdunt animas suas Servi Dei qui paren-

tum suoruin utilitatem procurant a Dei amore se separant." De
Modo bene vivendi (S. vii.) " Omnem hominem > /w/efe/tt judica tuum
esse fratrem." (Ibid. Sermo 13.) Ambrosius dicit, Icnge plus nos
debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos carnaliter
genuirnus" (Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Vurim.)
" Infantes nascuntur cum peccato, nee fiunt haeredes vitae aeternae

sine remissione peccati Cum igitur dubium non sit, in infan-

tibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen infantium Ethni-
corum, qui manent rei, et infavitium in Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a
Deo per minis terium." Melancthon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II.
Compare with this the passage above cited from Buddeus, as a proof
of the narrowness of the true believer s love). " Ut Episcopi vel
Clerici in eos, qui CatJwlici Christiani non sunt, etiam si consanguinei
fuerint, nee per donationes rerum suarum aliquid conferant."
Concil. Carthag. III. can. 1 3. (Summa Carranza.) " Cum haereticis
nee orandum, necpsalleiidam^ Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.)

APPENDIX. 327

Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of 'morality.
This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The
doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God. but only
faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious power
and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess, art. 3. Of Love and
the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: "What the
scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and
it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold
on mercy through faith. For then first does God become objectum
amabile, a loveable, blissful object of contemplation." Thus here
mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true that
faith is immediately distinguished from love only in this, that faith
places out of itself what love places in itself. " We believe that
our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out of ourselves."
Luther (T. xvi. p. 497. See also T. ix. p. 587). It is true that faith
in the Protestant sense, is faith in the forgiveness of sins, faith in
mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and died for men,
so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation, has nothing
further to do on his side than believingly to accept this sacrifice of
God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an object of faith.
On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith as faith, is God as
a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no merit to man,
who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches jealously over his
honour is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a God of love ]

The morality which proceeds from faith has for its principle and
criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the highest
object of faith is that which most contradicts reason, the Eucharist,
so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality which is true and
obedient to faith, is that which most contradicts Nature. Dog
matic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence.
Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. As
faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith
vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism, the
summit of which is " virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen of
virtues, the mother of all good" (see A. v. Buchers : Geistliches
Suchverloren. Sammtl. W. B. vi. 151) has been especially deve
loped by Catholicism; for Protestantism has held fast only the
principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical
consequences, it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian
morality. In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the
stand-point of primitive Christianity ; but in life, in practice, in mo
rality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament,
the heathen, adamitic, natural stand-point. God instituted mar
riage in paradise ; therefore even in the present day, even to Chris
tians, the command : Multiply ! is valid. Christ advises those only

328 APPENDIX.

not to many who " can receive" this higher rule. Chastity is a
supernatural gift; it cannot therefore be expected of every one.
But is not faith also a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a
miracle, as Luther says innumerable times, and is it not neverthe
less commanded to us all? Are not all men included in the
command to mortify, blind and contemn the natural reason 1 ? Is
not the tendency to believe and accept nothing which contradicts
reason, as natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual
impulse ? If we ought to pray to God for faith because by ourselves
we are too weak to believe, why should we not on the same ground
entreat God for chastity ? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly
implore him for it 1 Never ! Thus we may regard chastity as a
universal command equally with faith, for what we cannot do of
ourselves, we can do through God. What speaks against chastity
speaks against faith also, and what speaks for faith, speaks for
chastity. One stands and falls with the other ; with a supernatural
faith is necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestant
ism tore this bond asunder : in faith it affirmed Christianity ; in
life, in practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy
of natural reason, of man, restored man to his original rights.
Protestantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted
the Bible, but because it contradicts man and Nature. " He who
will be single renounces the name of man, and proves or makes

himself an angel or spirit It is pitiable folly, to wonder that

a man takes a wife, or for any. one to be ashamed of doing so, since
no one wonders that men are accustomed to eat and drink."
Luther (T. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possi
bility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, where celibacy
is eulogized as a laudable and consequently a possible, attainable
state ? No ! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Pro
testantism, in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by its
own inherent force, repudiated Christian supranaturalism in the
sphere of morality. Christianity exists for it only in faith not
in law, not in morality, not in the State. It is true that love (the
compendium of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so that
where there is no love, where faith does not attest itself by love,
there is no faith, no Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the
outward manifestation of faith, only a consequence, and only human.
' Faith alone deals with God," "faith makes us gods;" love makes
us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, so God is for faith
alone, i. e., faith alone is the divine, the Christian in man. To faith
belongs eternal life, to love only this temporal life. " Long before
Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to the whole world,
and said, that man should love Him and his neighbour. After that
he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we through and by him

APPENDIX. 329

should have eternal life Moses and the law belong to this life,

but for the other life we must have the Lord." Luther (T. xvi. p.
459). Thus although love belongs to the Christian, yet is the
Christian a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ.
It is true that to serve one's neighbour, in whatever way, rank or
calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve in fulfilling a
worldly or natural office, is only the universal, mundane, natural,
pre-christian God. Government, the State, marriage, existed prior
to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which
he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. Christ
has nothing to do with all these worldly things ; they are external,
indifferent to him. But for this very reason, every worldly calling
and rank is compatible with Christianity; for the true, Christian
service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised everywhere.
Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it leaves free ; but
only because all the rest is external to faith.

It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian
morality, as, for example, " Avenge not yourselves," &c., but they
have validity for us only as private, not as public persons. The
world is governed according to its own laws. Catholicism " mingled
together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms," i. e., it sought to
govern the world by Christianity. But " Christ did not come on
earth to interfere in the government of the Emperor Augustus
and teach him how to reign." Luther (T. xvi. p. 49). Where
worldly government begins, Christianity ends; there worldly justice,
the sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a Christian I let my cloak
be stolen from me without resistance, but as a citizen I seek to
recover it by law. " Evangelium non abolet jus naturae." Melanc-
thon (de vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. Chemnitii Loci
theol. de vindicta). In fact, Protestantism is the practical negation
of Christianity, the practical assertion of the natural man. It is
true that Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the flesh,
the negation of the natural man; but apart from the fact that this
negation has for Protestantism no religious significance and efficacy,
does not justify, i. e., make acceptable to God, procure salvation;
the negation of the flesh in Protestantism, is not distinguished from
that limitation of the flesh which natural reason and morality
enjoin on man. The necessary practical consequences of the Chris
tian faith, Protestantism has relegated to the other world, to heaven
in other words, has denied them. In heaven first ceases the
worldly stand-point of Protestantism; there we no longer marry,
there first we are new creatures ; but here everything remains as of
old " until that life ; there the external life will be changed, for
Christ did not come to change the creature." Luther (T. xv.
p. 62). Here we are half heathens, half Christians; half citizens

330 APPENDIX.

of the earth, half citizens of heaven. Of this division, this disunity,
this chasm, Catholicism knows nothing. What it denies in heaven,
i. e., in faith, it denies also, as far as possible, on earth, i. e., in
morality. " Grandis igitur virtutis est et sollicitate diligentiae,
superare quod nata sis: in came non carnaliter vivere, tecum pug-
nare quotidie." Hieronymus (Ep. Furiae Horn, nobilique viduae).
" Quant o igitur natura amplius vincitur et premitur, tanto major
gratia infunditur." Thomas a K. (imit. 1. iii. c. 54). " Esto robustus
tam in agendo, quam in patiendo naturae contraria" (ibid. c. 49).
" Beatus ille homo, qui propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licen-
tiam abeundi tribuit, qui naturae vim facit et concupiscent! as carnis
fervore spiritus crucifigit " (c. 48). " Adhuc proh dolor ! vivit in me
verus homo, non est totus crucifixus " (ibid. c. 34, 1. iii. c. 19, 1. ii.
c. 12). And these dicta by no means emanate simply from the
pious individuality of the author of the work de Imitations Christi ;
they express the genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality
which the saints attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned
even by the Head of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it
is said, for example, in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per

Alexaudrum papam III. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost primo ad.

Praelatos Eccles. Gallic. : "In afflictione vero corporis sui usque adeo
sibi mundum, seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus mar-
tyrum quoque eum merita obtiiiere sanctorum etc." It was owing
to this purely negative moral principle, that there could be enunciated
within Catholicism itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom,
without the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness.

It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supra-
naturalistic morality of Christianity ; but its negation has an essen
tially different significance from that of Protestantism; it is a
negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in life
what he ought to have affirmed in life, as, for example, the vow of
chastity, what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a religious
Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not affirm.
Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh,
in a word, he was a man, in contradiction with his essential cha
racter, his religious principle and conscience. Adhuc proh dolor I
vivit in me verus Iiomo. Catholicism has proved to the world that
the supernatural principle of faith in Christianity, applied to life,
made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting con
sequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather
this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegiti
mate, practical negation of Christianity illegitimate in the sense
of true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate church
the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life,
be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not

APPENDIX. 331

to be such. And it legitimized this negation of Christianity before
its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to
be Christian ; no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern Chris
tianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total
negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Pro
testantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as the
unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we refer
only to the essence, to the principle.

Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the
very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatize this
idea. " By faith Abraham offered up Isaac." Heb. xi. 17. " Quanto

major Abraham, qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit Jepte

obtulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab
Apostolo ponitur." Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). On the human
sacrifices in the Jewish religion we refer the reader to the works of
Daumer and Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only
blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays God's anger and
reconciles him to man. Therefore a pure, guiltless man must fall a
sacrifice. Such blood alone is precious, such alone has reconciling
power. And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of the
divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord's Supper, for the
strengthening and sealing of their faith. But why is the blood
taken under the form of wine, the flesh under the form of bread?
That it may not appear as if Christians ate real human flesh
and drank human blood, that the natural man may not shrink
from the mysteries of the Christian faith. " Etenim ne humana
infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione liorreret,
Christus velari et palliari ilia duo voluit speciebws panis et vini.' :
Bernard (edit. cit. pp. 189 191). " Sub alia autem specie tribus de
causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumeiidum
instituit. TJt fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de his quae
non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio
praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod
ceriieret oculus ; quod non habemus in usu carnem crudam comedere

et sanguinem bibere Et etiam ideo ne ab incredulis reliyioni

ckristianae insultaretur. Unde Augustinus: Nihil rationabilius,
quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas non
desit et ridiculum nullum fiat a paganis, quod cruorem occisi
hominis bibamus." Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. c. 4.)

But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost
abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of his
value ; for only because human life is regarded as the highest,
because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest
conquest over feeling, is it offered to God ; so the contradiction of
the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. Apart from

332 APPENDIX.

the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with
bread and wine, i. e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not
blood but wine, which is partaken, the mystery of the Eucharist
resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. " All

ancient Christian doctors teach that the body of Christ is not

taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of the
Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone by believers, by the
pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Chris
tians." " There are thus two ways of eating Christ's flesh, one

spiritual such spiritual eating however is nothing else than

faith The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it

corporeally or sacramentally." (Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7.) " The
mouth eats the body of Christ bodily." Luther (against the
"fanatics." T. xix. p. 417). What then forms the specific differ
ence of the Eucharist? Eating and drinking. Apart from the
Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually ; in the Sacrament he is
partaken of materially, i. e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated
by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into thy body, if
it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy of God? Dost thou pour
wine into a water-cask'? Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips
holy, when by means of them thou comest in contact with the Holy
One? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating and drinking is
declared to be a divine act; and this is what the Eucharist ex
presses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner.
But it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and
honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the enjoyment of
life is tlie enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true religion. But
to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating and
drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and drinking
must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed 1 Let it be remembered
that this irreligion is the analyzed, unfolded, unequivocally ex
pressed mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion
ultimately resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery
of heavenly bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness
freed from the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for
their object just as much as the heathens ; the only difference is,
that the heathens place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth
in heaven. Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite; that
which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.

21.

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the re
conciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition of God
and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-Man. The

APPENDIX. 333

unity of the Godhead and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth.
We have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at
once -man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering,
his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no
suffering to him as God. No ! what he acknowledged as man he
denied as God. He suffered only outwardly, not inwardly; i. e.,
he suffered only apparently, not really ; for he was man only in
appearance, in form, in the external ; in truth, in essence, in which
alone he was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have
been true suffering only if he had suffered as God also. What he did
not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in
truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians them
selves half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest,
holiest mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation
indeed lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical,*
theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others,
in which this is especially evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus,
where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds
tears only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says :
" Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that
thou hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who stand
round I said it, that they may believe in thee." The simulation
thus indicated in the Gospel has been developed by the Church
into avowed delusion. " Si credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas
divinitatis compassionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam
declinasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis

quod Deo dignum est Idem enim patiebatur et non patiebatur.

Patiebatur secundum corporis susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis

veritas crederetur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem

divinitatem Erat igitur immortalis in morte, impassibilis in

passione Cur divinitati attribuis aerumnas corporis et infirmum

doloris humanidfo;mae connectis naturae ?" Ambrosius (de incarnat.
domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). " Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat sapien-

tia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore sed eandem, qua

plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex tempore paulatim demonstrabat.

In aliis.ergo non in se proficiebat sapientia et gratia." Gre-

gorius in hornil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. iii. dist. 13, c. 1).
" Proficiebat ergo huinanus sensus in eo secundum ostensionerti et
alioruin hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et niatrem dicitur
ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerebat et habebat ac si agnitionis

* On this subject I refer to Littzelberger's work : "Die Kirchliclie Tradition iiber
den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer Grundlosigkeit nachgewiesen,"
and to Bruno Bauer's "Kritik der Evangeliseheu Gfeschichte der Synoptiker
und des Johannes." (B. iii.)

334 APPENDIX.

expers esset" Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2.) " Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut
homo locutus est." Ambrosius. " His verbis innui videtur, quod
Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo
dubitaverit affectu humane. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest :
non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubitantis et
hominibus dubitare videbatur." Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2.)
In the first part of the present work we have exhibited the truth,
in the second part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology.
The truth is only the identity of God and man. Religion is truth
only when it affirms human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in
the form of theology, it denies these attributes, separating God
from man as a different being. Thus, in the first part we had to
show the truth of God's suffering ; here we have the proof of its
untruth, and not a proof which lies in our own subjective view, but
an objective proof the admission of theology itself, that its highest
mystery, the Passion of God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is
therefore in the highest degree uncritical, untruthful and arbitrary,
to explain the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has
done, only as the religion of reconciliation between God and man,
and not also as the religion of disunion between the Divine and
human nature, to find in the God-Man only the unity, and not also
the contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ suffered
only as man, not as God. Capability of suffering is the sign of real
humanity. It was not as God that he was born, that he increased
in wisdom, and was crucified; i. e., all human conditions remained
foreign to him as God. " Si quis non confitetur proprie et vere sub-
stantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem uiiioiiem, ex
quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatam, sit con-
demnatus." Concil. Later. I. can. 7. (Carranza.) The divine
nature, notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God
and man, is just as much dissevered from the human nature in the
Incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions
of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an in
comprehensible, miraculous, i. e., untrue manner, in contradiction
with the relation in which, according to their definition, they stand
to each other. Even the Lutherans, nay Luther himself, however
strongly he expresses himself concerning the community and union
of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not escape from the
irreconcilable division between them. " God is man, and man is
God, but thereby neither the natures nor their attributes are con
founded, but each nature retains its essence and attributes." " The
Son of God himself has truly suffered, and truly died, but according
to the human nature which he had assumed ; for the divine nature
can neither suffer nor die." " It is truly said, the Son of God
suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as the Godhead,

APPENDIX. 335

does not suffer, still tlie Person who is God suffers in the other
half, the manhood ; for in truth the Son of God was crucified for
us, that is, the Person who is God; for the Person is crucified
according to his manhood." " It is the person that does and suffers
all, one thing according to this nature, another according to that
nature, all which the learned well know." (Concordienb. Erklar.
art. 8.) "The Son of God and God himself is killed and
murdered, for God and rnan is one Person. Therefore God was
crucified, and died, and became man; not God apart from
humanity, but united with it ; not according to the Godhead, but
according to the human nature which he had assumed." Luther
(T. iii. p. 502). Thus only in the Person, i. e., only in a nomen
proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two natures united.
" Quando dicitur : Deus est homo vel homo est Deus, propositio
ejusmodi vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem personalem
in Christo supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unioiie
nunquam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse

Deum Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non

posse, longe est manifestissimum Dicere itaque non licet,

divina natura est humana aut deitas est humanitas et vice versa."
J. F. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. dogm. 1. iv. c. ii. 11). Thus
the union of the divine and human natures in the Incarnation is
only a deception, an illusion. The old dissidence of God and man
lies at the foundation of this dogma also, and operates all the more
injuriously, is all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind the
appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socinianism, far
from being superficial when it denied the Trinity and the God- Man,
was only consistent, only truthful. God was a triune being, and
yet he was to be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens
simplicissimum ; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God was
God-Man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or annulled
by the manhood, i. e., it was to be essentially distinct; thus the
incompatibility of the Divine and human attributes contradicted
the unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the
very idea of the God-Man the arch-enemy of the God-Man,
rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite mysticism. Thus
Socinianism only denied what faith itself denied, and yet, in con
tradiction with itself, at the same time affirmed; it only denied a
contradiction, an untruth.

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the Incarnation as a
work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his
majesty Amor triumplmt de Deo; for the love of God is an
empty word, if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction
between Him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of
Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the

336 APPENDIX.

close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a
mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only 011 the truth of the
suffering rests the true positive impression of the Incarnation.
Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division
between the divine and the human nature in the God-Man, we
must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of
which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we
have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the
supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Chris
tians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human
individual. " This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself,
who has created heaven and earth." Luther (T. ii. p. 671.) "I
point to the man Christ and say : that is the son of God." (T. xix.
p. 594.) " To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to
have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify
from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes which, according
to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted
to the man Christ." " Therefore we believe, teach, and confess

that the Son of man now not only as God, but also as man,

knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures."
" We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is
not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other
attributes of the divine nature." (Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u.
Erklar. art. 8.) " TJnde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua
humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi" Buddeus
(1. c. 1. iv. c. ii. 17). The same is expressly taught by the
Fathers and the Catholics, e. g. " Eadem adoratione adoranda in

Christo est divinitas et humanitas Divinitas intrinsece inest

humanitati per uuionem hypostaticam : ergo humanitas Christi seu
Christus ut homo potest adorari absolute cultu latriae." Theol.
Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124.) It is certainly
said, that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself which is wor
shipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies
not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the
worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image,
and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are them
selves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body, only be
cause the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh,
man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter
into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and
contact with God, if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy
of God 1 If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie
in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh the flesh of brutes,
the habitation of the divine spirit ? True, it is said : Man is only
the organ, in, with and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in

APPENDIX, 337

the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said
above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in
man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him.
If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incar
nate in a brute ? Thus God comes into man only out of man,.
The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the
divinity and glory of man. " Noscitur ex alio, qui 11011 cognoscitur
ex se" this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through
man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling,
and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects,
loves, is his objective nature; and man is known through God, and
known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God,
which is divine, can be the object, organ and habitation of God.
True, it is further said : it is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man,
who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and
empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all.
He is a man as we are, " our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh
and bone of his bone." "In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us
is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there
I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I
believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I
hold that I myself rule." Luther (T. xvi. p. 534). This then
is an undeniable fact : Christians worship the human individual
as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it
is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of
the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the
heathens did not worship the statues of the gods ; for to them also
the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they
t^Y/ worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human indi
vidual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.

22.

Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the Mystery of
Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its
grand result the unveiling of this mystery the realization and
recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between
Protestantism and Catholicism the old Catholicism, which now
exists only in books, not in actuality consists only in this, that
the latter is Theology, the former Christology, *'. e. (religious) An
thropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a
God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being.
The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore
in this, to be not a man, but more than a man a heavenly
abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of

Q

338 APPENDIX.

a religion realize, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion
whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth, or is a mere chimera.
Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth
only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or
rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has
not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and
for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true, real
God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being
of flesh and blood. " This defiance the devil hears unwillingly,
that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and
reigns in heaven over all." Luther (T. xvi. p. 573). " Out of
Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole
Godhead." Id. (T. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory
and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists
for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against
himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Pro
testantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically,
virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for
man, for the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest
act of the cultus, "the mass of Christ," is a sacrifice of man,
the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God
in the Host as on the cross ; in Protestantism, on the contrary,
it is a sacrifice, a gift, of God : God sacrifices himself, surrenders
himself to be partaken by man. See Luther, e. g. (T. xx. p. 259.
T. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the
predicate of the Godhead (of Christ) God is man; in Protes
tantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the pre
dicate of manhood (Christ) man is God. " This, in time past,
the greatest theologians have done they have fled from the
manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves
to that alone, and thought that we should not know the
manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of
Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood
of Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of
no God, nor Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin
Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also
his Godhead." Luther (T. ix. pp. 592, 598).* Or, briefly thus : in
Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for
man.t "Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for

* In another place Luther praises St. Bernard and Bonaventura, because they
laid so much stress on the manhood of Christ.

*t" It is true that in Catholicism also in Christianity generally, God exists for
man ; but it was Protestantism which first drew from this relativity of God its true
result the absoluteness of man.

APPENDIX. 339

us, suffered for us, was crucified, died and was buried for us.
Our Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for our good
at the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living
and the dead for our comfort. This the holy Apostles and beloved
Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words : Us
and our Lord namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and
will it is to help us .... so that we should not read or speak the
words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves
also." Luther (T. xvi. p. 538). " I know of no God but him
who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is
man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives
himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are
ours." (T. xii. p. 283.) " God cannot be a God of the dead, who
are nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the
dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father
who had no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is
a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have
a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would
be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is
not a God like the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary
God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon
him and worship him. A God is He from whom everything

is to be expected and received If he were God for himself

alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he

would be a God of stone or straw If he sat alone in

heaven like a clod, he would not be God." (T. xvi. p. 465.)
" God says : I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy
God. ... To be a God means to redeem us from all evil and
trouble that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c." (T. ii. p. 327.)
" All the world calls that a God, in whom man trusts in need and
danger, on whom he relies, from whom all good is to be had and
who can help. Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to
man, and does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This
thou seest also in this text : ' I am the Lord thy God, who brought
thee out of the land of Egypt.' There we are taught what God is,
what is his nature, and what are his attributes, namely, that he
does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all
calamities." (T. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i. e., real
God, is God in general, only in virtue of this that he is a God to
man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man ; then, in truth,
man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute,
divine being. The proposition : A God existing only for himself is no
God means nothing else than that God without man is not God ;
where there is no man there is no God ; if thou takest from God the
predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of

340 APPENDIX.

deity; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his
existence.

Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in
the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God.
Protestantism is the contradiction of theoiy and practice ; it has
emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protes
tantism, Christianity, i. e., God, does not contradict the natural
impulses of man : " Therefore, we ought now to know, that God
does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man, which
was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and
preserves it." Luther (T. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason
and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have
shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is
itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, con
ceived as external to man. The reduction of the extrahuman,
supernatural, and anti-rational nature of God to the natural,
immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of
Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental
contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth, the result, the
necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity.

THE END.